Inspiration for a festival show can come from all kinds of places.
Inspiration for a festival show can come from all kinds of places. For Hannah Gadsby and her latest show, Mrs Chuckles, she first got the idea when a friend pointed out that she wasn’t so crash hot at small talk. More like she was woeful at it and borderline rude.
“It’s not so much being shithouse as unwilling,” she explains. “I think if I apply myself, I’m OK. But I rarely apply myself. I’m an observer. People like you to participate,” she says from a hotel bathroom in Brisbane, where she is grappling with a contact lens.
“It’s not something new, for me. It’s been levelled at me before throughout my career in life. It was said to me again and I thought that I had improved, but I hadn’t, that much,” she admits of what prompted her to write this new stand-up show, although she’s not overly concerned. “Over the course of writing and performing the show it’s evolved and I’m at peace with it.”
For last year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival show, Hannah Gadsby had gone walking across England and came back with The Cliff Young Shuffle, which won her the Director’s Choice Award. (It also scored her nominations for Best Comedy at Adelaide Fringe and Best Comedy Performer at the Helpmann Awards). Mrs Chuckles is far less energetic in origin and therefore “much truer to my character.”
By contrast to her failings in small talk, Gadsby says she has “excelled” in the area of accidents and illnesses, which has been a topic in most of her festival shows, and she’s now writing a book based on her medical history. She appears weekly on Adam Hills In Gordon Street Tonight, hosted her own special Hannah Goes Domestic for ABC TV’s Artscape Program and this festival will once again also be conducting comedy art tours of the NGV.
Hannah Gadsby performs Mrs Chuckles at The Swiss Club from March 31 – April 24. It’s at 7pm Tuesday – Saturday and 6pm on Sundays. Tickets are $20 – $26 and available through Ticketmaster online, 1300 660 013 and at the door.
