On stage Melbourne-based Sydney comic, Emily Tresidder, has a way of capturing your attention. Her huge smile, quick wit and perfect timing has the audience along for the ride before she has even dropped her first punchline, and it’s a joy to watch.
In person, Tresidder is just as engaging, but there’s a seriousness and assuredness to her that’s also intriguing. Beat sat down with her ahead of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival to chat about her new show, her new gig as a podcaster, and how to deal with life’s daily annoyances.
“Basically my new show, in a nutshell, is about our hang-ups. It’s little things in day to day life that are emotional or mental irritations,” Tresidder says. “Nothing too serious. Just road rage-type stuff: people cutting in line, people walking slowly. Just little things that irritate us throughout our day, and making light of them. It’s really just me picking fun at these things and how we deal with them.”
Known for her penchant for involving unsuspecting audience members in her shows, she says this show is no exception. “It’s interactive to a point, but all of my shows are interactive. So anyone who reads this and thinks, ‘It’s interactive. That’s really frightening and it’s not for me,’ I say, ‘challenge accepted.’ Come to the show and I’ll show you that audience interaction is not always the devil.”
2018 will mark Tresidder’s fourth appearance as the Melbourne International Comedy Festival with her previous offerings, Absolutely Ridiculous in 2015, 2016’s Crazy Is and last year’s Not Your Ex, all receiving critical acclaim.
“I feel like everything in this show has been tried and tested, and I definitely feel like I’m in a better position than I was this time last year,” she says. “I have a quiet confidence with this show, but I’m really excited to bring it to an audience.”
Over the last 12 months of putting this show together Tresidder has had plenty of chances to try out potential material on her much-loved weekly podcast Vic and Em’s Comedy Gem’s and admits she was pleasantly surprised how relatable some of her more outrageous material was to her test audiences.
“It’s a really harsh and bleak time for our planet, and I think that it’s been really lovely that the human experience is not as alienated as we thought,” says Tresidder. “It’s nice to know that we all have the same sort of hang-ups, and the same sort of craziness – for want of a better word – as well. In some strange way it’s comforting.”
