Cal Wilson knew the festival was approaching when she started scrubbing out her vacuum cleaner the other day.
Cal Wilson knew the festival was approaching when she started scrubbing out her vacuum cleaner the other day. “I thought, ‘What the hell are you doing scrubbing out the vacuum cleaner?’” Then it came to her. “I must have a show to write.”
It’s been five years since ex-pat Kiwi stand-up Wilson has done a brand new show for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival but old habits die hard. “Every year when I write a festival show the biggest part of the show is the procrastinating before I actually write the show, so I thought I might as well take the bull by the horns and actually look at how much I procrastinate and why we procrastinate,” she says of her new show, The Great Intender.
She knows she’s not the only one who puts things off, which is why part of her show will be a quest to find out where she sits on the “leader board” of procrastinators. “I want to find out whether I’m the worst procrastinator or whether I’m quite normal and just beating myself up over nothing. So each night I will be finding out where I sit on the scale using the audience responses,” she says.
Trial shows have already offered Wilson a chance to confess some of her sins and gauge reactions. For example, Wilson got married three years ago but has yet to get around to sending out the thank you cards for the gifts. “Some people thought that was OK,” she says. “One woman physically recoiled and was absolutely horrified. She said she got hers out after three days – and that sounded like quite a dull honeymoon to me,” giggles Wilson.
For Wilson, procrastinating is genetic. It’s only taken her father 34 years to finish the upstairs bathroom. But The Great Intender is as much about audience members confessing as it is her, she says. “I love hearing about what people put off and the things that they do,” she says.
Although it has been five years since Wilson has done a new Melbourne International Comedy Festival show, it hasn’t actually been because she’s been procrastinating. It’s just been a matter of “life getting in the way. Having a baby and the baby ate my brain, and I finally feel like its grown back,” she says with a laugh. “So it’s time to get back on the horse.” She hasn’t exactly been idle in that time, mind, doing radio with Nova, and making television appearances on shows such as Good News Week, Spicks And Specks and Thank God You’re Here. She also slips across the ditch once a month to record the NZ equivalent of Good News Week, called 7 Days. She still keeps her hand in with live gigs, as well, working a lot in the corporate sector and last year she did a non-themed show for Melbourne Fringe.
But she makes a long-overdue and welcome return to this festival. The Great Intender will combine stand-up with some video footage of her “accomplishing some things I’ve put off for a while”, she reveals.
By outing herself as a procrastinator, she’s now actually getting a few more things done, she admits. Those handmade books she made when her nieces and nephews were born? The 11-year-old got his the other day. In 1992, she told a friend she’d make her bagels. “I’m quite shit at making bagels, but she’s coming to stay with me next weekend so she’s getting bagels for dinner,” says Wilson. “So I’m forcing myself to become motivated by admitting it. It’s like my 12 step program – that I’ve written one or two steps of…”
Cal Wilson performs The Great Intender at Victoria Hotel’s Vic’s Bar from March 31 – April 23. It’s at 8.30pm Tuesday – Saturday and 7.30pm on Sundays. Tickets are $24 – $27.50 and available through Ticketmaster online, 1300 660 013 and at the door.
