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 HANNAH GADSBY and ZENOBIA FROST chat about rock & roll bowls and shuffling after sheep in gumboots.
Hannah Gadsby never wanted to be a comedian. In fact, she’s happy to say she didn’t really aspire to anything much at all. She grew up in a "small-town shithole" in Tasmania ("where the monkeys have syphilis") with one street, one school, and one golf club. "I played golf and bowls with little old ladies in white dresses," Gadsby explains – "very rock & roll." A contented "but vague" cinema projectionist, Gadsby’s life was turned upside down in 2006 when a friend entered her in the Raw Comedy Competition – and she won. Three years later, despite having performed around the globe with the cream of Aussie comedy, it still hasn’t sunk in. "I’m still surprised," she says, "I’m still just riding the wave."
In 2009 Gadsby got to know Adam Hills, of Spicks And Specks fame, on a long-haul flight to Montreal – and so impressed him that he produced her acclaimed Kiss Me Quick…I’m Full Of Jubes tour. Her next show is called The Cliff Young Shuffle – referring to Australia’s infamous 1980s geriatric marathon hero. I admit I haven’t heard of him.
"I guess anyone under thirty probably hasn’t heard of him," says Gadsby. "I was four or five at the time he hit the nation’s consciousness; he was like the Susan Boyle of slow-moving running. He lived on a potato farm, and thought running after his sheep – in his gumboots – was more efficient than chasing on bikes. He only discovered his running talent in his sixties: he won a lot of races, then spent the next five or ten years shuffling from Westfield to Westfield doing signings. People loved him."
So what’s the connection for Gadsby? Well, with some time to kill between the Kilkenny Comedy Festival and the prestigious Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh, she recently found herself attempting to walk across England. All of it. "I’m so weak that my feet got really sore really quickly, and I found myself sort of shuffling. It made me think of Cliff." The Cliff Young Shuffle, then, is the story of her journey across the UK – as far as she got – and the curious characters she met along the way.
The Cliff Young Shuffle kicks off the Brisbane Comedy Festival, this year curated by Brisbane’s own twenty-year-old Josh Thomas, another RAW prize-winner. (They share, as well, runner-up positions in Edinburgh Fringe Festival’s So You Think You’re Funny competition.) More than twenty comedians will perform at this year’s festival, including Adam Hills, Frank Woodley, and Wil Anderson. There are lots of laughs to look forward to, but Gadsby says she’d like her show to mirror life. "I’d like the audience to feel a little anticlimactic," she says, wryly. "I’d like to them to shuffle out and say, "Really – is that it?"
HANNAH GADSBY will show you how to dance THE CLIFF YOUNG SHUFFLE at the Brisbane Powerhouse from Feb 23 to 28. Ph: 3358 8600. www.brisbanepowerhouse.org / www.briscomfest.com
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