The Australian comic returns to the fringe with her candid new show about anxiety. She’s one of several performers to address mental illness this year, including Bryony Kimmings and drag star Le Gateau Chocolat.
Your show is called What If There Is No Toilet? Is this to appeal to the British love of toilet humour?
Ha! It’s probably the show where I mention toilets and scatological humour the least. But my experience of irritable bowel syndrome and my anxiety are inextricably linked; I can’t talk about one without the other.
You’ve also made a documentary about mental illness for Australian television, which you’ve screened at the fringe.
The production team that made the documentary wanted it to be broken up with my standup about anxiety, so that’s where this show started. But when we started researching and writing there was just so much material. The fantasy would be that I would get to tour this show in a longer form so I get to talk about all the stuff I’ve had to leave out.
You’ve always talked honestly about emotional issues in your shows. How have your audiences responded to hearing comedy about mental illness?
As soon as I mention the word “anxiety”, which is about four minutes into the show, the audience go quiet, and they’re like, oh this is the serious bit. I’m thinking, no mate, the next hour is the serious bit so you need to chill out. If I don’t feel they’re relaxed, I let them know they’re absolutely allowed to laugh. There is no point in this show that is supposed to be the serious moment, and that has given people a licence to relax and laugh about it.
Has it been therapeutic to make comedy out of those experiences?
At the beginning, all I was worried about was: what if people don’t laugh? Because if they don’t, that’s a long fucking hour on stage, talking about very deep personal things. So this is probably the show that I’ve had to rewrite and throw the most away but there’s a lot of satisfaction in that. It’s so nice to be on stage and think: “This is amazing. I’ve created this thing that I love and I care about, and I want people to enjoy and relate, and at the moment I don’t feel scared that they’re not going to have that.” I’ve had a couple of walk-outs, but that didn’t affect how I felt. That’s been a real revelation in the context of this show.
Felicity Ward: What If There Is No Toilet? is at the Pleasance Courtyard, 9pm, until 31 August.
