Hannah Gadsby
‘I couldn’t have carried on doing comedy’
For many comedians, winning the main award at the Edinburgh Fringe is the springboard to a stellar career. Steve Coogan, The League of Gentlemen and Bridget Christie have all won it in the past. However, for this year’s winner, Hannah Gadsby, the award marks her farewell from comedy.
The Australian’s show, Nanette, isn’t really comedy at all. In fact, Gadsby flat out rejects the art form on stage. She vows never to return to stand-up.
It is a startling declaration for the 39-year-old to make – even more so given that, after 10 years on the club circuit, this is her breakthrough moment. But watch Nanette and you will understand why.
Stand-up comedy, as Gadsby explains in the show, is too restrictive. The requirement to be funny has thus far prevented her from telling the story that she really wants – really needs – to tell. It is the story of a lifetime of abuse and pain inflicted on Gadsby because of her sexuality. And in Nanette, she delivers it uncensored.
“For a long time [in my career], I was protecting the audience from doing the work of trying to understand me,” she says, ahead of a 14-night run in London. “I couldn’t have carried on doing that. I was feeling quite lost. By walking away from comedy, I’m walking away from the expectation that I have to end on a laugh.” Or as Gadsby puts it at one point during the show: “I have a responsibility to make you laugh. But I’m not in the mood.”
In Nanette, Gadsby does actually make us laugh. But as she reveals the full extent of the victimisation she suffered growing up gay in Tasmania, where homosexuality wasn’t legalised until 1997, the atmosphere in the room changes dramatically.
She describes the time she had her ribs broken on a night bus by a bloke who mistook her for a man. And she recalls the words her mother uttered when she came out in her early 20s: “I wish you hadn’t told me. How would you feel if I told you I was a murderer?” The show ends with an impassioned call to arms for gay rights.
On the afternoon I saw it in Edinburgh, most of the audience remained in their seats in stunned silence, some wiping away tears, long after Gadsby had left the stage. One critic wrote that it “changes everyone who goes to see it”.
So, no, Nanette is not your typical hour of stand-up. Despite this, in addition to winning the main award in Edinburgh, Gadsby also picked up the Barry Award at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival earlier in the year. It is the comedy equivalent of winning a Golden Globe and an Academy Award. “I’ve never had a response like it,” says Gadsby. “I can’t comprehend it.”
Inevitably, performing it takes its toll. In Edinburgh, Gadsby’s voice cracked with fury, and she beat her chest in frustration, as she reopened old wounds. She tells me the experience is a bit like “intensive trauma counselling”.
Does she find that the anger comes naturally? “It is so guttural,” Gadsby says. “Whatever I do on stage depends on how I feel. I have just finished a run at the Sydney Opera House and there I wasn’t angry, I was upset.” She has never doubted it’s been worthwhile, though. “To think that I might be making small differences to people counterbalances the draining element of performing the show,” she says. “And it’s ended up making a difference to quite a few people.”
Speaking to Gadsby can be a disconcerting experience. I have never interviewed anyone who has been prepared to open up quite this readily. Her answers are sometimes so raw, they blindside you. In her 20s, after coming out, Gadsby hit rock bottom. Rejected by her family, drifting between dead-end jobs and beset by mental health problems, at one point, she found herself homeless. “I was on my way to an early grave, I have no doubt about that,” she says. “It wasn’t just the shame surrounding my sexuality, it was also the realisation that I don’t process the world like normal people do [Gadsby has since been diagnosed with Asperger’s and ADHD]. I was lost and I didn’t think I deserved any better. To want something requires an element of self-worth.” She only discovered comedy at 29, when a friend entered her into a competition.
Gadsby doesn’t blame her family, with whom she has now reconciled, but rather the internalised homophobia that was so prevalent when and where she was growing up. Even she felt it. “To un-click that internalised homophobia is an underestimated reality for a lot of gay people,” she says. “It doesn’t matter how great the process of coming out is, there is always shame, and shame is toxic.”
But what of those words spoken by her mother when she discovered her daughter was gay? Has she really forgiven her? “It was a terrible thing to say, nothing short of that,” Gadsby says. “But my mum now has an incredibly evolved understanding, not only of what my identity is, but also of what we went through as a family.
“And that’s actually the significant part. We love to tell people they’re ignorant, but we don’t give them any help. There’s something in my mum’s story that gives us a chance to imagine something a little better. What she said was very offensive, but that’s what fear does. It’s incredibly important to know that something of real value came out of her woeful response.”
This belief – or hope at least – that people can change is needed now more than ever in Australia. Since early September, a voluntary government survey has been under way, which asks Australians whether they support same-sex marriage. If there is overall support for changing the law, the prime minister has promised a vote in parliament.
The survey concludes on November 7 but, already, more people have responded than voted in last year’s
‘By walking away from comedy, I’m walking away from the expectation that I have to end on a laugh’
‘It doesn’t matter how great the process of coming out is, there is always shame, and shame is very toxic’
election. Most pollsters predict that the majority of the population will vote “yes” to same-sex marriage – but even so, the debate has prompted a wave of homophobic bigotry. So much so, in fact, that Gadsby wishes the issue had never been raised. This seems a strange stance for her, given how forcefully she battles for gay rights. But actually, it only highlights how appalling some of the language being used in Australia has been.
“I’d prefer not to have equal rights in order for this discussion to stop,” Gadsby says. “I’m surprised at how badly I’ve coped, and that’s just on an individual level. A lot of gay people have been caught by surprise at just how sad it’s been.
“Even if only 30 per cent of people vote ‘no’, that’s a significant amount of people who hate us. It really makes me feel quite unsafe [...] I’ve spent my entire life being a debating topic. It just feels like we’ve done all this work and no one has bothered to learn.”
Our time is nearly up but I have one last question for Gadsby: is she happier now for telling her story? “I wouldn’t say I’m happy,” she laughs. “But I feel as if I’ve lost a load because all of these things inside me were part of who I was. It’s about letting go of all of that and saying, this is who I am.”
It is a terrific shame that comedy is losing her voice – but then she has already said more than most comedians say in a lifetime.
Hannah Gadsby: Nanette is at Soho Theatre until Nov 11. Tickets: 020 7478 0100; sohotheatre.co.uk