COVER STORY
Tasmanian comedians are using their unique outsider perspective as islanders to export jokes to the world
Tassie comedians are making it big on interstate and overseas stages.
Hannah Gadsby, in one of her earliest stand-up routines, stood on stage in front of a mainland audience and told them she was from Smithton in Tasmania’s North-West. “On a map of Tassie, it’s about ... here,” she said, pointing to her groin, earning huge laughs for her creative new spin on the old map-of-Tassie gag. Tasmanians are accustomed to being the butt of jokes, so it is a rich vein of material for stand-up comedians to exploit. But local comedians have more weapons in their arsenal than self deprecation, incest jokes and pubic hair references. It turns out that our unique perspective and position in the world gives us something of an advantage, creatively and comedically.
Since winning the national final of Raw Comedy in 2006, Gadsby has put Tassie on the map, as it were.
On top of her successful stand-up career, Gadsby has been a guest on Good News Week and Spicks and Specks, co-wrote and appeared in Josh Thomas’s comedy series Please Like Me and, most recently, stunned the world with her hilarious, heartbreaking and subversive stand-up show Nanette on Netflix.
A masterpiece of social commentary, Nanette starts out as a typical stand-up show before Gadsby expertly dismantles the structure of her own work right before the audience’s eyes. She then serves them a brutal and beautifully eloquent sucker punch as she explains why she no longer wants to make jokes at her own expense, exposing a dark truth behind the humour.
Nanette not only left Australian viewers breathless and inspired, but it shook viewers around the world with its raw honesty and vital message. Suddenly this Smithton girl was a presenter at the 2018 Emmy Awards in Los Angeles and assessing future career options in the US.
One thing that helped Gadsby is a trait she shares with other Tasmanian comedians: an outsider’s perspective. While she might have been more marginalised than most Tasmanians, having suffered badly at the hands of homophobia, all Tasmanians share an “otherness” by virtue of our isolation, physically and culturally. Tasmanian comedians use this perspective to their advantage.
“Whenever I mention that I’m from Tassie, it gives the audience that immediate understanding that ‘oh, he’s not from here’,” Burnie-born comedian Josh Earl says. “That always helps to set up the idea that I’m going to see things a little bit differently.
“Whenever English or American comedians come to Australia, they tell jokes about the things they’ve noticed are different here, how we speak differently, do certain things differently. And when you’re from Tassie, you only have to go as far as Melbourne or Sydney to be able to use that same kind of observational humour.”
Fellow Burnie boy Justin Heazlewood, aka The Bedroom Philosopher, agrees. “I think Tasmanians have a certain sense of isolation in our DNA, it’s there even if you’re not conscious of it. By default we feel separate from the rest of Australia and that impacts on the culture of a place and how you see the world. You also have to make up your own style because you aren’t exposed to the same influences as you would be in the mainland cities,” he says.
“That outsider’s view gives you an observational bent to your humour. My Northcote song [So Hungover] is a good example of that. I don’t think anyone from Melbourne or Sydney would have been able to write that because hipster culture was just so
normal to them, it took someone coming in from the outside to see the humour in it.
“Even now I still sometimes feel like the ‘Tasmanian in Melbourne’, I’m different and calling out the things people take for granted: look at these cool people being cool! But I know deep down I’m not cool and I see that as an advantage as well.”
That classic Tasmanian self-deprecation seems to crop up almost subconsciously, even as Heazlewood tries to explain his success he returns to laughing at his own expense and jokes about this isolated home state.
Gadsby’s stand-up has always been the epitome of this style of humour, a Tasmanian characteristic that is probably an indication of a certain resilience in the people who live here.
“Gadsby was very harsh on herself and has decided she doesn’t want to do that any more, which is completely understandable,” Hobart comedian Tori Hodgman says. “Generally, the self deprecating humour used by Tasmanian comedians is more about just being Tasmanian than anything so personal.
“We tend to accept all the realities and quirks about where we live, warts and all. We have a certain amount of self awareness like that. But in places like Sydney, people get offended if you dare to say something negative about their city. I don’t think we’re easily offended like that.”
Hodgman, Earl and Heazlewood are representative of another trend, that of moving interstate in order to break into the stand-up scene. Tasmania has a healthy comedy scene now, with regular clubs like Jokers Comedy Club and The Clubhouse in Hobart, and Fresh Comedy in Launceston giving local comedians a place to hone their skills as well as bringing in established talent from elsewhere. But it has not always been so easy for Tasmanian comedians to get a gig.
“I had been doing occasional gigs for six months with a Launceston group doing weekly improv nights and eventually someone in the audience told me they liked my work and they were bringing Rod Quantock to Tassie, [and] would I like to support him,” Earl says. “Of course I said ‘yes’ and Rod said to me: ‘you have to go to Melbourne, that’s where all the gigs are’. I was 22 when I moved to Melbourne and while the scene looks big, it is actually quite small and competitive. But it is the best thing I ever did. Every gig was a networking opportunity and my third gig was with Charlie Pickering, who was really supportive and helped me a lot.”
Hodgman, trained as a lawyer, started in comedy when she was a state finalist in Raw Comedy in 1997 and while she didn’t win the competition it put her in touch with Adam Hills in Adelaide, which is where she cut her teeth as a stand-up comedian.
“At the time he was just some unknown Adelaide DJ who did some comedy management on the side and within six weeks I was getting paid for stand-up gigs. Adelaide was a great place to start out. You get thrown in with enough competition to have to work hard to get to the top, but at the same time it’s not an impossible thing to do because there isn’t as much competition as you might find in Melbourne.”
Tasmania has its share of success stories in the Australian comedy scene and Heazlewood notes his corner of the state is over-represented. “Between me, Hannah and Josh, it’s starting to get crowded with so many North-Westers! I was famous way before these kids,” he scoffs. “In 2002, I was man-of-the minute on triple j, Mr special from Burnie. But I’m told the Parklands High School wall of honour still doesn’t have a photo of me. That hurts.
“It’s great to see Tasmanians doing well, though. Watching Luke McGregor come up from below me, pass me and then race off miles ahead of me ... fortunately I have excellent self-esteem so I’m comfortable with that.” Hannah Gadsby
Born in Tasmania’s North-West, Gadsby grew up in Smithton, with the town’s conservatism and her experiences with homophobia forming the basis for much of her stand-up material. Growing up gay in a small town was brutal for Gadsby, especially in her teens in the 1990s, a time when debate was raging in Tasmania about whether to legalise homosexuality. After going to Smithton High School and Launceston College, she studied a Bachelor of Arts at the Australian National University, majoring in art history, background which she later used to present comedy art tours at the National Gallery of Victoria and to write two art documentaries.
She got her big break in 2006, when she won the national final of the annual Raw Comedy competition, leading to a successful Australian and international stand-up career. She has been a guest on Good News Week and Spicks and Specks and starred as a recurring character in Josh Thomas’s comedy series Please Like Me. This year she shot to international fame when her 2017 stand-up show Nanette started streaming on Netflix. Following Nanette’s success she was a presenter at the 2018 Emmy Awards, presenting the award for best director of a drama series. She has now relocated to Hollywood to pursue further opportunities arising from Nanette’s success. Justin Heazlewood (“The Bedroom Philosopher”) Growing up in Burnie, Heazlewood started out writing and performing comedy songs at school talent contests, basing his style on the likes of musical comedy duo Lano and Woodley (Colin Lane and Frank Woodley), even performing one of their songs in high school along with fellow Parklands High School alumni and comedian Josh Earl.
After submitting a radio piece to the ABC’s regional storytelling competition Heywire in 2002, he was picked up by youth broadcaster triple j to be a regular guest on the Morning Show with a humorous songwriting segment, calling himself The Bedroom Philosopher. In 2006 his brilliant song I’m So Post Modern became a huge hit and