If there’s anyone who lives up to the name of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival this year, it’s undoubtedly Lara Ricote.
The daughter of Mexican actress Gabriela Rivero, Ricote grew up in the US, but now lives in the Netherlands. Somehow, the globetrotting comedian has managed to fit Australia into her itinerary for the second time in two years, and hopes to repeat the success of her last visit to the country.
“[The Aussie crowds] were great, really,” she recalls. “I felt people were really on board, we were in a fancy hotel and I was being really silly and they couldn’t have been more up for it.
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“I hope that it feels like the new show is really alive in the room with them,” she adds. “I’ve only done it ten times now at my Soho Theatre run and it feels like a show! I had one of my friends – comedian extraordinaire Leo Reich – direct it, and I feel like we did a very good job.
“I’m really excited to share it with whoever comes, and you should please come.”
Her new show is called Little Tiny Wet Show (baptism), and promises to be a little darker than the silly reputation that Ricote has made for herself. But six years into the world of comedy, she’s still surprised it came this far.
“I hadn’t expected any of this, but I had really hoped,” she admits. “I noticed I loved [comedy] pretty much immediately. I think one thing that really worried me was what the hell would I be making shows about down the line, especially because my first show was a compilation of the material I had done up until that moment in time, and once I burned that I found myself empty-handed.
“But with this show, I’ve realised that as long as I’m trying to get closer to what I find funny, I’ll have shows in me. And I’m doing that! And I plan to keep doing it!”
In only six short years, Ricote has managed to craft a strong following around the world, even being named by The Telegraph as one of the “50 funniest comedians of the 21st century”. At number 30, she beat out even the likes of Ricky Gervais, though she says the pressure of these expectations can be a good thing.
“It feels really very nice, and I can’t really understand it,” she says. “I think I’ve just got to keep myself feeling like the only pressure there is, is for me to get close to what I find funny, for real, and that’s a good pressure to have; I need a bit of that pressure.
“I also think I need to think of it more as an invitation, inviting me to really get in there (my brain) and get weird(er) and take risks, and that’s really the only two things that that really lovely recognition needs to bring into my life.”
For those who witnessed Ricote’s 2023 show, GRL/LATNX/DEF, they’d have received a strong introduction to her personality and what is important to her. Based on that title alone, it’s also possible to extrapolate that one topic close to her heart is her degenerative hearing loss, which plays a large role in her material.
Shining a light on the nature of disabilities in general, she admits that the world of comedy has been a strong advocate of the disabled community, and one that is only getting better as time goes on.
“I find the comedy industry, overall, pretty lovely in relation to my being hard of hearing,” she says. “Of course they do things wrong, we all mess up the whole time, […] but I find there’s a genuine interest in doing things better.
“I can only hope that stays, that there are more people asking questions so that you’re not always the one that has to be pestering for access stuff,” she adds. “I think thinking ahead and keeping people’s differing needs in mind is a really big step and most of the industry I’ve been in or around feel like they’re trying.”
Whatever the case, Lara Ricote urges her fans to live in the moment with her surreal new show, and it seems like she’s just excited as we should be.
Lara Ricote is performing at ACMI Swinburne Studio from March 28 – April 21. Tickets here.
