Spending time being me

I know my blog is way too late but you know what? I was living my life.

I am home from Adelaide with so much happiness in my heart. The journey was so worthwhile because when I planned to go I was worried that it would work out. My venue was the town hall which to be honest wasn’t perfect as a venue, it was too stuffy, too quiet and most nights they shut the bar. That isn’t good is it? The other shows in the venue struggled to get an audience so therefore I didn’t have people to ‘feed off’ as I expected audiences would have wandered about the place.

Turns out my room was basically the only show selling tickets over the run and that was down to Ashley doing her thing. She flyered and even street performed with me at the local fringe caravan which was a public performance space to help get the public aware of the fringe. Yet it turns out we made decent cash and got great reviews and made great pals.

Now Adelaide fringe is nothing like Edinburgh fringe, they don’t quite understand flyering, they don’t get why you would hand them a flyer advertising your show. The public still aren’t in step with the fringe and it doesn’t attract as many people to the city to enjoy its festival. So we have to work with what we have on the ground and most people think that The Garden of Unearthly Delights is the only place to be and I actually hated it there. It was over blown, too many people dressed as Victorian organ grinders and too many bugs and too much noise!

Anyway, I managed to bag a comedy nomination I got ‘People’s Choice’ but never won it, still to be nominated my first year was awesome.

The best bit is actually getting to do a job you love and I felt Adelaide wasn’t really female friendly, now don’t get me wrong- am not saying they are all sexist white males being rude but a lot of them were! The females who have made it there took a long time to get to the top and it shows that most Australian comedy promoters are women but they don’t really bring women to the festival and always worry that women don’t sell as good as men! ‘Bring over’ is a term where a promoter pays for you to come over they finance the flight/hotel etc and offer you a solid wage with an incentive bonus if you sell out the show.

I thought was all behind us but no that attitude thrives well in Australia especially Adelaide.

A woman has never brought me over but a man in New Zealand did! Scott Blanks from Auckland and I made good cash over the years because he believed in a woman!
I adored Adelaide and yet there were things made me uncomfortable, the fact I never saw a rainbow flag or an obvious gay bar unsettled me, and there were no brown faces in my audiences. There were no ethnic comics to be seen and that was surprising maybe I never looked hard enough but if you have to look hard enough then....that’s the point!

I will go back though; I will go back and enjoy it again. I loved the Rhino Rooms which does comedy all year in Adelaide and the welcome from the local comics was just lovely and made me feel like I was with family.

Getting home is always good though. I missed everyone so much and being away for a month is a long time, I always worry about my dad. Seems he was fine and dandy and husband looks after him good.

My mates had a laugh and said “You go Pan/Asian and there are two earthquakes, a plague of locusts a tsunami and nuclear fallout” so I suppose I am the horsewoman of the apocalypse.

Anyway it’s good to be home.