“I’m perfectly comfortable with it,” says Adrienne Truscott, referring to performing bottomless on stage in front of an audience. That’s not bottomless coffee bottomless; it’s no knickers bottomless; the stuff of nightmare for most women. Being naked from the waist down and knocking back gins and tonic on stage are Truscott’s ways of challenging the conservative ‘she’s asking for it’ concept traditionally associated with sexual assault; no matter how little she’s wearing or how drunk a woman may get, rape only happens when a rapist acts.
Asking For It: A One-lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy and Little Else! is Truscott’s first solo show; usually she’s on stage as one half of the gloriously outrageous Wau Wau Sisters but for MICF 2014 it’s this one lady and her bits doing the unthinkable – joking about rape. “I thought about it for a one year,” Truscott explains. “Could I find a way to use humour to talk about rape? Was it a great idea? Was it a terrible idea? The material was pouring out; the trick to pulling it off was to remember all the reasons people love comedy.”
The challenge for Truscott in developing the show lay simply in figuring out how to forge the comedy. She’d already had the experience of making a joke about rape in front of a group of women, who laughed. This made her wonder if she could use humour to talk about rape. “There have been rape jokes made by shit male comedians”, she says. “There was a flurry of American and Australian comedians making rape jokes. I hadn’t done classic stand-up before, but the challenges in making the show are what any comic will say about any new show: pacing, timing; it’s not for the want of material to turn inside out and comment on. I knew if my show wasn’t funny it wasn’t going to work. My jokes had to be really edgy and funny.” Truscott says performing the show provides her with an ‘incredible joy’. “It’s a release; it’s a privilege to have a microphone – I’m not being asked to speak at a rally, I’m not being deeply political here, it’s genuinely light-hearted. I feel very strongly that it’s a stand-up show rather than feminist performance art. It’s not a show by victims for victims. I’ve made it for myself and for other women,” Truscott continues. “I’m taking the piss out of stuff. When I hear women laughing, I think, ‘I’d better get the guys laughing too.’ I want the blokes at the show to laugh; I want everyone to laugh. To make that big a leap.”
Events around the world last year added impetus to Truscott’s plans to create Asking for It. There was the tragedy of the gang rape in Delhi which galvanised the Indian public into protesting, and the fiasco of Laugh Factory’s host Daniel Tosh’s ill-advised joke and response to a woman heckler in New York which set people talking about who could and could not make jokes about rape. Much discussion ensued and many male comics defended Tosh’s right to joke about whatever he likes. It was time for a woman to speak up, then. “It led to people saying that women can never find a joke about rape funny and that there are some things you can never joke about – two statements I wholly disagree with,” Truscott observes. Making this show has led her to look at comedy in a more academic way than what she’s used to. “Structure, pacing – it’s a big balance.” But the comedy ultimately comes from who Truscott is as a human being: “I have this twisted sense of humour,” she says. “People say ‘oh Adrienne, not everything’s funny.”
BY LIZA DEZFOULI
Venue: Portland Hotel – Portland Room, Cnr Russell & Lt Collins St, CBD
Dates: Currently playing until April 20 (except Monday)
Times: 9.45pm (Sundays 8.45pm)
Tickets: $26-$35
