Ten Steps to Nanette E-Book

Hannah Gadsby

• Herausgeber: Allen & Unwin
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 662

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

'There is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself.' Hannah Gadsby, Nanette Multi-awardwinning Hannah Gadsby transformed comedy with their show Nanette, even as they declared that they were quitting stand-up. Now, they take us through the defining moments in their life that led to the creation of Nanette and their powerful decision to tell the truth - no matter the cost. Gadsby's unique stand-up special Nanette was a viral success that left audiences captivated by their blistering honesty and their ability to create both tension and laughter in a single moment. But while their worldwide fame might have looked like an overnight sensation, their path from open mic to the global stage was hard-fought and anything but linear. Ten Steps to Nanette traces Gadsby's growth as a queer person from Tasmania - where homosexuality was illegal until 1997 - to their ever-evolving relationship with comedy, to their struggle with adult diagnoses of autism and ADHD, and finally to the backbone of Nanette - the renouncement of self-deprecation, the rejection of misogyny, and the moral significance of truth-telling. Equal parts harrowing and hilarious, Ten Steps to Nanette continues Gadsby's tradition of confounding expectations and norms, properly introducing us to one of the most explosive, formative voices of our time.

Leseprobe

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Allen & Unwin

First published in the United States in 2022 by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

Copyright © 2022 by Hannah Gadsby

The moral right of Hannah Gadsby to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

Endpaper artwork by Louise Bourgeois, Ste. Sébastienne, 1998, ink on xerox paper mounted on canvas 197.5 x 160 cm. Collection Glenstone © The Easton Foundation/VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2022. Photo: Ron Amstutz

Allen & Unwin

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Web: www.allenandunwin.com/uk

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN 978 1 91163 023 4

Trade paperback ISBN 978 1 91163 024 1

E-book ISBN 978 1 76087 026 3

Printed in

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FOR MUM AND DAD

‘Art is restoration: the idea is to repair the damages that are inflicted in life, to make something that is fragmented—which is what fear and anxiety do to a person—into something whole.’

—LOUISE BOURGEOIS

Introduction

Technically, this is my second book. But I wouldn’t bother trying to find a copy of my first effort as it was only published in an edition of one, and I’ve misplaced it. This is no great loss to literature because my first book was a very bad book. Although, I shouldn’t be too hard on myself, the story does have a bit of charm considering I was only seven years old when I penned it. But as a stand-alone piece of writing, it is terrible. Even the title is bad:

How Siffin Soffon became friendly with a Dragon. Part One

I put a spoiler in the title. What a fool. Why would you bother reading a book when you already know that no matter how dramatic the narrative twists and turns might be, Siffin Soffon and the Dragon will eventually end up on pretty good terms.

Clearly, I had an epic series in mind when I added ‘Part One’ to the title, but sadly I never got round to writing the second instalment. Even so, one would assume I’d have left the reader with a cliffhanger so as to whet their appetite for Part Two, but no, Part One ends with Siffin Soffon and his new dragon pal waving a happy goodbye from the pleasant shores of ‘Holiday Island.’ No wonder I never got round to writing the sequel, I couldn’t even think of a name for an island beyond the singular purpose I’d invented the island for. I was clearly all out of ideas.

I suppose you might want to read the book just to find out who this Siffin Soffon character is, but here, again, you’ll find my writing falls short because, apparently, I didn’t think it was necessary to offer a description of the central character of my novella. My accompanying drawings could have been enlightening, but again, ambiguity reigns; Siffin Soffon begins his epic journey as a carefully executed, albeit childishly rendered, little red goat, but by the time he becomes friendly with the Dragon he is just a lazy tangle of orange squiggles because I’d grown bored of drawing and had also, presumably, lost the red pencil. Fortunately, I do have some insider knowledge on this matter, and I can report that Siffin Soffon was neither a red goat nor an orange squiggle, he was the imaginary friend of my older brother, Hamish, and according to him, Siffin Soffon was a tiny footballer who lived in the toilet with his best friend Kinnowin.

When the one copy of my very bad book found its way back to me recently, I was inundated with a cluster of memories that I didn’t even know I had. I’m not talking about repressed memories, they didn’t return with a shocking jolt, they just quietly worked their way to the front of my thought queue as if they’d never left.

The cover, two pieces of red cardboard bound by masking tape, had faded and softened over time, but my poorly planned title still looked as if it had only been poorly executed just yesterday. As I held it in my hands, I recalled how angry seven-year-old me had become the moment I realised that I didn’t have enough space for the last six words of the title, and I felt the heat of my self-admonishment rise as sharp as if thirty-five years had not passed. Flipping through to the back page, I saw the note of praise written by the vice principal next to a reward sticker of the Pink Panther curving himself around a giant pen with the words ‘Well Done!’ spilling from its point. I remembered how lovingly I’d traced around the sticker with my finger, almost bursting with pride. I also recalled that I had felt a little bit annoyed that it was only the vice principal, and how I’d wondered what the hell I had to do to get the principal’s attention. I could also remember how my teacher had insisted she write my story out for me because I was too young to have my pen licence and how she had then insisted that I read my story to the whole class, and how everyone in my whole class had HATED both me and my book. I don’t blame them. It was, after all, a very bad book.

The return of my literary debut stirred up memories that went well beyond the object itself, and included the emotional roller-coaster that had precipitated my urge to put pen to paper. It had all begun with my obsession with Hamish’s imaginary friends and the mounting distress I felt because they didn’t want to be my friends too. I hadn’t known what ‘imaginary’ meant and had just assumed that Hamish had cool friends who refused to talk to me, which made for many toilet-time tears. I also remembered how, after it was explained to me that Hamish’s friends lived inside his head, I had asked if I was allowed to imagine Siffin Soffon too, and when Hamish said no, I’d burst into tears again and this prompted Hamish to offer me the thoroughly unacceptable compromise of the imagined friendship of Kinnowin. I did not accept, because I only really wanted Siffin Soffon, who I’d imagined was a little red goat and had managed to convince myself that I could sometimes hear him clip-clopping on the plumbing. I did not care for Kinnowin, I hardly knew her, I didn’t even know what she looked like.

I also remembered how, at one point, I’d attempted to conjure my own imaginary friends and began galloping about on my horse, Sergeant, while chatting to my good friend Mr Dog, who was a dog I’d obviously named in the tradition of Holiday Island. It was not a winning moment, as I could only recall how profoundly foolish I had felt because I knew my friends were not real, and, to make matters worse, I had imagined them to be incredibly large chaps, which meant I still didn’t have any friends to talk to in the toilet. I don’t know what to call my next move, as I don’t think it is possible to kill beings that do not exist, so let’s just say that I ghosted Sergeant and Mr Dog, violently. It felt humane at the time, but really, I just wanted them out of the way so I could try my luck with Siffin Soffon again.

After my needless imaginary horse-and-dog ritual sacrifice, Hamish told me I was too late. His friends were gone. When I pressed him for their whereabouts, he very sombrely reported that they were in Heaven helping God. Throughout my childhood and well into adulthood I worshipped Hamish and it often felt, painfully so, that he deliberately abused the power that he had over me. But when I remember episodes like this, I know that simply couldn’t be true of a small boy who not only assumed that God would need the help of tiny football players but who also felt such levels of loneliness that he had to invent friends he could talk to, and poo on. He clearly had issues of his own.

Despite all these memories returning with such wonderful clarity, the story itself failed to ring a single bell in my brain. It was so unfamiliar, in fact, that the ending would have come as a complete surprise had I not spoilt it with the title. Another striking element of the very bad book that I don’t recall authoring was the high level of violence, bloodthirst and death it contained, not to mention how matter-of-factly seven-year-old me described the guts and gore of it all. I should have been given counselling, not a Pink Panther sticker.

Yet, despite the foreign story line with all its beheadings, torture and other blood-filled whatnot, there was still a familiarity to the story, because Part One essentially reads like a thinly veiled autobiography. Siffin Soffon hated dresses, had dreams about being a dog and was a big fan of food. But the most astonishing thing about my very bad book is that it reads like a blueprint for my future, a map, if you will, for the way that adult Hannah emerged from that strange and childish little author. Much like my own life, Siffin Soffon’s journey was defined by accidents, isolation and exile and his survival, as much as his perils, were, like mine, brought about by an abundance of misplaced trust and a passive acceptance of circumstance, no matter how grim.

Ten Steps to Nanette, which I guess could be dubbed a very delayed Part Two, is more of a traditional memoir. It begins with my birth and ends with a publishing deadline. It has two stories to tell—one is about my rather odd start to life, and the other is about my rather odd decision to end my life in comedy. I have tried to approach this book with as much honesty as possible; however, what follows is also a thinly veiled fantasy. I’ve chosen a bit of fantasy over fact in a few places because some of my stories are not entirely mine. I’ve changed some names, and even merged people, times and places, because I don’t believe I have the right to publicly open anybody else’s can of worms. But, please! I implore you not to fall into the trap of playing ‘truth detective’, because most of my life has been lived inside my own head and, unless you are Mr Dog and/or Sergeant, you have never ever been there, so you will just have to take me at my word.

And although I am inclined toward extracting a laugh when I tell a story, you should be forewarned that some horrible things have happened to me, and some of my stories might very well upset you. They certainly upset me. But I don’t want you to fret, so let me just spoil your journey now, before you even get your foot on the first step, by giving away the ending, which is to say, as I’m writing this, I am on pretty good terms with the Dragon and there is plenty of food.

Seriously, though. I am triggering all of the warnings. If you are distressed by things like assault, molestation, rape, injury, isolation, suicidal ideation, body image or other mental health difficulties, please read on with caution, if you decide to read on at all. I see you, I support you. Breathe easy, my friends.

STEP 1

EPILOGUE

I had to know if the lawn was real. It looked too perfect to be made of organic matter, the vast green square around the picture-perfect pool had a uniformity that bordered on unsettling, every single blade of grass was as tall and as straight as its neighbour. Surely, I thought, it had to be plastic. But then again, that didn’t make any sense. Fake grass is for people who are house-proud but water and/or time-poor. Fake grass is not for the stupidly rich who have a household staff with a gardening division. I broke free of the mingling and quietly made my way to the edge of the path, dropped my serviette and, as I bent down to pick it up, I brushed my hand over the mysterious lawn. Fuck me. It was real. I made my way back to the party, with a new mystery to solve: Why would you manicure real grass to make it look fake?

I knew I was behaving abnormally. And by ‘abnormal’, I don’t mean my failure to blend in with all the celebrities and Hollywood power players who had gathered in Eva Longoria’s unnervingly perfected garden. Personally, I think that it’s normal to be abnormal in the midst of that strange a milieu. I didn’t feel at all bad that I’d rocked up in jeans and a T-shirt while everyone else was wrapped in fancy, because I don’t think it’s abnormal for a Hollywood outsider to not know that a dress code is an actual code that has to be cracked. The invitation had said dress for brunch, and because brunch is not a real meal, I took that to mean I didn’t have to make a real effort. So, I felt perfectly normal about my inability to match the ethereal magnificence of Janelle Monáe. What is not normal, however, is abruptly walking away from a conversation with Janelle Monáe to satisfy a sudden urge to pat some strange-looking lawn.

It was not the first time I’d been distracted by underfoot landscaping decisions in the presence of celebrity. At the Netflix Emmys party a few months earlier, I couldn’t think about anything other than the white carpet. What kind of monster would choose white carpet for an outdoor event? The outdoors, no matter how fancy, is just not the natural habitat of carpet—white or otherwise. The issue plagued me so doggedly that I failed to notice I was in the middle of what could have easily been a genuine fever dream.

When John Stamos introduced himself to me and gushed glowingly about my work, I could only watch his mouth move and hope he didn’t notice that my mind was elsewhere. The only thing I really wanted to talk about was under our feet: What do you reckon will happen to this carpet tomorrow? Will it have a life beyond this event, Sir Stamos? It was only much later—months in fact—that I was able to process the fact that I had been approached by Uncle Jesse because he knew who I was and wanted to let me know that he liked my work. There is nothing reasonable or logical about that set of facts.

When Jodie Foster asked to have her photo taken with me, I failed to be as flattered as I should have been because I was too worried about all the damage the carpet was doing to the turf underneath it. And when I was introduced to three of the Queer Eye boys, I was not curious about the absence of the other two, the only thing on my mind was how it was possible that the white carpet could still be so white hours into a crowded schmooze-and-booze fest.

I couldn’t accept that it was one single piece of carpet, the area was huge and it didn’t have a straight-edged perimeter like an indoor room would, but I was having trouble finding any joins. Even I knew, however, that it would be inappropriate to get down on my knees and start sweeping around with my hands to feel it out, so I decided to make my way to the edge and see if I could find some answers there. That was when I bumped into Norman Lear. He turned around and apologised to me. What a nice man, I thought, and smiled back as he introduced himself, which was just as well, because I had no idea who he was. I made a note to google him later and then politely left to resume my quest, failing to seize my opportunity to pick the brains of the king of television sitcoms himself.

My obsession with the carpet situation was finally broken when I got a tap on the shoulder by a very small woman.

‘Are you Hannah Gadsby?’

I nodded, praying that she would introduce herself, because I had no idea who she was, but she simply nodded back and then announced, ‘Jennifer Aniston would like to meet you.’ I expected that the introduction would take place where I stood, but the small woman instead told me to follow her before turning abruptly and disappearing into the crowd. How curious, I thought; this was not an invitation, it was a summons. Intrigued, I trotted after her, forgetting all about the white carpet.

Jennifer Aniston greeted me with great enthusiasm and incredible warmth, which is not at all what I expected from somebody who curates their own mingling experience without moving an inch. If that were me, I would surely be messing with people.

After Jennifer Aniston told me how excited she was to meet me, I told her that I was also very excited to meet her. I was being polite, of course, I was not excited, I was terrified. I am autistic, I don’t know how to navigate small talk with my best friend, so the prospect of conversing with one of the most enduringly beloved famous people there is, was not at all relaxing. What level of admiration does she expect from riffraff? Would she require that I confirm her identity and status through the metaphor of flattery? Should I inform her that I had not seen Friends? I needn’t have worried, because apparently Jennifer Aniston just wanted to let me know that she had not seen my show. Touché.

It had the rhythm of a compliment, but really, it was just a fact. As a fact, it might have been an insult but somehow, Jennifer Aniston managed to make it sound like enthusiastic approval. It was shocking nonetheless, and I forgot myself, and replied more bluntly than appropriate: ‘Why are you telling me this?’ My question gave her pause, and as she did, I began to regret my whole existence. ‘I don’t know,’ she laughed. I laughed too. It seemed like the polite thing to do. She continued, ‘It’s just that I was on location and everyone kept telling me that I had to see Nanette, and I didn’t have the chance and when I heard you were here, I just wanted . . .’ She trailed off, almost embarrassed, but I was just relieved that I wasn’t the only one who had no idea what the endgame was. She grabbed my hands as if to reassure us both. ‘I will watch it! And I know I will love it,’ she promised, offering me a clear path out of the awkwardness, which I did not take. ‘But what if you don’t? What if you hate it?’ She patted my hands and replied, ‘I won’t tell you!’ Classic LA.

This was my first-ever Emmys party and I have to say, I think I did a pretty good job at not making a buffoon of myself. Unlike with my brunch couture disaster, I came close to cracking the dress code, I’d had a shower, but I still managed to bring a raggedy incongruence to my presence. I put it down to the fact that my gown had not been made for the occasion and I was wearing my own shoes. I was not wearing a gown, of course, I was wearing my only suit. But you know what I mean. My only regret is that I did not stay long enough to use the bathroom. I wanted to know what kind of strange flooring decisions had been made for the occasion of fancy people abluting.

The show that Jennifer Aniston had not yet seen was my stand-up comedy special, Nanette. When it had dropped on Netflix on 19 June 2018, it made such a big splash that within a few months I’d become the talk of the town, and by that I mean THE TOWN. I’d only ever been to LA on layovers before, and so it was a bit rude that on my first time in the city proper I had to pass my own giant face plastered on billboards and bus stops as I was being dragged all over town, rubbing shoulders and having the kind of meetings that my peers would kill for.

The few months that followed the release of Nanette were amongst the strangest and most unsettling of my life. I went from relative obscurity to intense visibility in such a short period of time that I sustained spiritual whiplash. Ironically, all the chaos that followed my ‘overnight success’ is actually a lot funnier than the show itself. Like way, way funnier. But that is hardly surprising, given that on paper, Nanette is arguably the most deliberately miserable, unfunny hour of comedy ever made.

For the record, as of yet, Jennifer Aniston has not found me to tell me that she loved Nanette. I suppose I could take that to mean she hated it—she wouldn’t be alone. But I think it is more likely that she is quite busy and may not even remember having a conversation with me. But I do hold out hope that one day I will get a tap on my shoulder and a small woman will tell me that Jennifer Aniston wanted me to know that she didn’t think Nanette lived up to all the hype. That would be Amazing.

I might have been living the showbiz dream, but, and I can’t stress this enough, this so-called dream was never my dream. I know the more cynically minded will want to read that as faux humility, but I’m actually quite happy to own my ambitions where they exist—and when it came to breaking into the ranks of the La La people, it was blunt pragmatism that steered me away from ever giving it a second thought. I just don’t see the point of indulging any fantasy that, in practice, could only ever amount to being a monumental waste of time and energy, because that’s what chasing Hollywood success could only ever be for someone like me, given that for most of my life I have been a financially insecure autistic Australian genderqueer vagina-wielding situation who does not have a bird-like skeletal system. I might have had a reasonable shot with only one or two of those ‘quirks’, but not the whole set, and certainly not with Cate Blanchett already in town hogging all the moody lesbian roles. But, honestly, my biggest impediment is that I’m quite lazy.

It was only the coalescence of some extreme luck forged by an unforeseeable cluster of circumstances that pushed me into the peripheral vision of the movers and shakers of the so-called town of tinsel. It could have been a transformational experience save for one very big problem: I had nothing to pitch. Which, except for a strategically leaked sex tape, left me with absolutely no way of capitalising on my big moment. This isn’t to say that I had nothing more to offer, it was more that I had put absolutely everything I had into the piece of work that had turned me into an ‘overnight success.’ Nanette sucked me dry and I was an empty shell, a veritable husk of a human, and it felt like I was just pissing this huge and rare opportunity right up the wall. I felt hopeless and helpless and it was all I could do to lurch from one incredible moment to the next and hope I didn’t make mistakes I couldn’t recover from. At least I managed to get a book deal.

Nanette’s success might have taken me completely by surprise, but the backlash that followed it was entirely expected. I had, after all, written a show denouncing the two most overly sensitive demographics the world has ever known: straight white cis men and self-righteous comedians. I have only myself to blame.

‘I’LL TELL YOU WHAT SHOULD BE THE TARGET OF OUR JOKES RIGHT NOW—OUR OBSESSION WITH REPUTATION. REPUTATION. THAT’S WHAT WE VALUE MOST. NOT HUMANITY—REPUTATION. YOU KNOW WHO TAKES THE MANTLE OF THIS MYOPIC ADULATION OF REPUTATION? CELEBRITIES. AND COMEDIANS ARE NOT IMMUNE.’ (NANETTE56:42)

When Ellen DeGeneres was interviewed by The New York Times to promote the release of her own Netflix special, Relatable, she was asked what she thought about Nanette and responded by saying that she ‘loved’ it, but then kind of undid that idea by making it clear that she didn’t think it was stand-up. She called it ‘a solo show’. I got stuck on the word ‘solo’ when I read that. Stand-up comedians nearly always perform solo—Ellen certainly did—so how is that a distinction? I supposed that if by ‘solo’ she meant that I didn’t work with a team of writers, then yes, I suppose, by contrast, Ellen’s special was not a solo show.

Ellen was not the first comedian to make this kind of mild jab about Nanette, but I will only flag her because she is ‘my people’, and that feels like a safe space in this moment in time. I have been made well aware that a lot of comedians hate both me and my work, and while it is not an entirely pleasant scenario, I can’t blame them for being so peeved. I kind of agree on one level, a comedy show that is defiantly unfunny has no right being crowned the ‘next big thing in comedy’. But I didn’t do the crowning, so I don’t know what the fuck they want me to do about it.

Ultimately, I don’t feel compelled to defend Nanette as comedy, because that’s a dull game, but I do want to take a moment to directly address any Americans who may be reading this: your comedy gods are not mine. I have heard all about your Saturday Night Live thing; and I acknowledge its place in your pantheon of yuk-yuks—but ultimately, it means nothing to me. SNL could be a freight company for all I care. All jokes aside, which is what got me into this mess to begin with, I should stress that the Australian comedy scene is very, very different to the American model, and that my work is not simply a reflection of who I am as an individual, but also very richly informed by the culture and circumstance of where I learnt my craft.

I am what you could call a ‘festival comic’, which means I am something of a long-form comic. I don’t build sets by stacking jokes one on top of the other, I shape shows out of interconnecting material that is designed to pull an audience through a cohesive hour-long experience. To be clear, I don’t think this approach to comedy is superior, it is simply different. Furthermore, I should stress that I am not the inventor of this approach, or even the best at it. The Australian and UK festival circuit is full of incredible comedians crafting utterly marvellous hours of comedy, year after year, and the quality and depth of the talent pool was such that I never had to pay much attention to what my American peers were saying or how they said it, because I had more than enough brilliance around me to occupy all of my creative curiosity. I was always aware of all the big hitters of American comedy, of course I was, because that’s how aggressive cultural imperialism works, but I never felt inspired enough to think of it as any kind of relevant benchmark for myself.

Before Nanette made her big splash in 2018, I already had eight hour-long stand-up comedy shows sitting in my oeuvre, and four comedy-adjacent art history lectures, so I don’t think not being able to snag a set at Caroline’s on Broadway has held me back at all. And with all this experience and exposure to the art of the ‘comedy hour’, it shouldn’t be a surprise that I was able to take sixty minutes of abject misery and turn it into a very compelling and hugely successful piece of work. I have skills, people, I know what I am doing, even if you don’t like it.

‘PEOPLE FEEL SAFER WHEN MEN DO THE ANGRY COMEDY. THEY’RE THE KINGS OF THE GENRE. WHEN I DO IT, I’M A MISERABLE LESBIAN, RUINING ALL THE FUN AND THE BANTER.’ (NANETTE58:09)

I am still bewildered by the howling rage in which other comedians demanded that I be cancelled from comedy because I went too far with all my not-not-jokes. George Carlin once said that it is the job of a comedian to find the line and then cross it. That is what I have done. The line I found is the definition of comedy itself, and given the considerable nerve I struck, I would say that makes me an excellent comedian. Except I won’t. Because I don’t think of myself as a comedian, I am a stand-up performance artist, or, as Andy Kaufman would say, a song-and-dance man.

Make no mistake, though, comedy is in a real bind at the moment. None of the whingey whiners are wrong to be concerned, they’re just wrong about where they’re directing their panic and blame. I am not the problem. The witch they are looking for is context. It is no longer the case that jokes only live in the room where they’re told. Rightly or wrongly, everything you say on stage, or anywhere for that matter, has the potential to be taken out of context, which makes satire next to impossible to execute without some snag or another. Comedy is not Vegas anymore. I don’t imagine there’s a comedian alive who doesn’t have at least one really toxic joke lurking in their back catalogue waiting to come back to haunt them. I’m sure my turn will come. It would be impossible to think, for all the material I’ve pushed out into the world, that there isn’t some badtaste shit amongst it. I was, after all, born ignorant and steeped in the same bucket of prejudices as everybody else.

I do think, however, I might have a little bit of an advantage over most comedians because the predominant demographic of my core audience has always been lesbians. If an audience of lesbians don’t like your comedy, they will shut you down. And lesbians don’t need to retreat to the safety of the internet, either, they’ll hold you to account right there and then. And I’m not talking about quaint interventions like heckling or booing. It’s so much worse than that. It’s cold.

‘WHAT KIND OF COMEDIAN CAN’T EVEN MAKE A LESBIAN LAUGH? EVERY COMEDIAN EVER! HA, HA, HA. GET IT? LESBIANS DON’T HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOUR!’ (NANETTE15:40)

Lesbians, you see, form their call-out subcommittees while you’re still on stage, and as a team they will mute you with their clicking fingers. Lesbians are happy to cut your jokes off at the punch line, hack out the heart of your set and kill all the comedy before your material has even had a chance to live its best life. It is all you can do to watch your best work bleed out in front of you as your audience deconstructs a long list of triggers you’ve never even heard of, much less intended to pull. I would very much like to back this point up by making a joke about hazing but I know better than that now. As frustrating as it was to be policed by the lesbian feedback complex, I am terribly grateful for it now, as I think the worst of my ideas were nipped in the bud before they could do real harm to my career . . . and to other people, of course.

Well before I even began writing Nanette, I was bored by emotionally reactive comedians who have no problem defending bigotry in the name of laughter. And while it does sound very logical to insist that the singular purpose of comedy is making people laugh, I would argue that we have the internet nowadays, and that really has cornered the market of mindless laughs: it’s free, forever and you don’t have to leave the house. And why would you leave the house to go to a comedy club and risk a surprise set from Louis C.K. being all sad and talking about how he wanks like a teenage fascist? Personally, I would say that if you care more about the effect of your words than you do about the meaning behind them, then you have a recklessly Machiavellian worldview. Laughter is rarely benign, but it is often malicious. So, I don’t think it really matters much if you think your jokes are ‘pure’, you’re a chump if you think an audience cares about your intentions. They’ll take your ‘harmless’ jokes and laugh for their own harmful reasons, or, in the case of me, not laugh at all, because I won’t rest until comedy is dead.

You could be forgiven for thinking that Nanette is first and foremost a deconstruction of comedy. You’d still be wrong, but I could forgive you, only because I wanted you to think that Nanette was a deconstruction of comedy. But really, all my chat about that was just a decoy. A McGuffin, if you will. I wanted to destroy the myth of the ‘genius’ and draw attention to the long history of abuses of power that dominate the story of Western art. I wanted to deflate the egos of mythologised artists and I could think of no better medium than stand-up comedy to do this with . . . given that it is also an industry full of immature boys fighting in a vacuum to be the best at something fewer and fewer people actually care about.

If I were pushed to categorise Nanette, I would call her ‘stand-up catharsis’, an experiment in the transmutation of trauma. You see, I was not simply telling my audience about my traumas; my goal was to simulate a feeling in the room that was akin to trauma, because I wanted to see if I could create an experience of communal empathy in a room full of strangers. Not just for me, but for all the people who have ever gone to comedy shows and been triggered by all the rape celebrations, violence, misogyny, homophobia and transphobia that gets spewed into microphones the whole world over.

I understand, better than most, that Nanette is not ‘technically’ a comedy show, but the twist is, she is not comedy in the same way that Frankenstein’s monster is not a human. I did not write a speech and then call it comedy. I took everything I knew about comedy, then I pulled it all apart and built a monster out of its corpse. Nanette would not have worked if it were just a theatre show gate-crashing a comedy stage. People know the difference. My delivery was the same as I used for stand-up. The room was in play, there was no fourth wall, no heckle was ignored, walkouts were acknowledged. There was no director, no dramaturg, just me.

I should also point out that Nanette is not completely devoid of jokes. The first half is crammed full of very solid punch lines, and every time I performed the show, I filled the room with a lot of big laughter, without fail. That is important, not just as a bragging point, but because that’s how I built the trust. And I needed my audience to trust me because I needed my audience to feel safe, and I needed my audience to feel safe so that I could take that safety away and not give it back. Why? Because that is the shape of trauma.

‘THAT IS MY JOB. I PUT TENSION IN A ROOM AND THEN I CURE IT WITH A LAUGH. AND YOU SAY—THANKS FOR THAT! I NEEDED A LAUGH. BUT I MADE YOU TENSE! THIS IS AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP. WHY DO YOU STAY WITH ME? SEE THAT? I JUST MADE YOU LAUGH WITH A JOKE ABOUT DOMESTIC VIOLENCE. COMEDY IS NASTY WORK.’ (NANETTE30:36)

Nanette was dropped into the stream smack-bang in the middle of the #metoo movement, which is the only time to release a comedy show which includes a story about a violent assault followed by a ten-minute screed calling bullshit on the patriarchy. But that’s why I am such a great comedian, because comedy is, after all, all about timing. The show may not be funny, but you can’t accuse me of not knowing how to read a room. But to be clear, I did not create Nanette with a Netflix special in mind. I didn’t even have a deal in place when we filmed it, and the only reason Nanette became a Netflix phenomenon was because she had already inadvertently become a phenomenon on her own.

‘ARTISTS DON’T INVENT THE ZEITGEIST. THEY RESPOND TO IT.’ (NANETTE45:03)

The purpose of Nanette was never to catapult me into the top rung of the comedy conversation, quite the opposite, I was trying to cull my audience, I was trying to find my small pocket of genuine fans so I could be who I wanted to be on stage, without worrying about making a broad audience feel comfortable. But from the very first time I performed Nanette my audience refused to let me push them away, they made it clear that they understood my pain and that they cared. And so, what I had thought would effectively seal me off into an obscure corner of both my life and my art form instead became something far bigger than me, something of an international cultural phenomenon that not only shook the comedy world out of its tree but pushed my own existence into a shape I no longer recognise.

‘I DO THINK I HAVE TO QUIT COMEDY, THOUGH. AND SERIOUSLY. I KNOW IT’S PROBABLY NOT THE FORUM . . . TO MAKE SUCH AN ANNOUNCEMENT, IS IT? IN THE MIDDLE OF A COMEDY SHOW.’ (NANETTE16:53)

One of the most talked-about points of Nanette was that early on in the show I declared that I was quitting comedy. I try not to get annoyed by all the people who took that statement so literally because, to be fair, there were times when I felt as if I really did want to quit, because performing the show was incredibly stressful and so overwhelming that it felt like the only sensible thing to do. But I was never really serious about quitting.

‘MY CV IS PRETTY MUCH A COCK AND BALLS DRAWN UNDER A FAX NUMBER.’ (NANETTE31:53)

I owe stand-up comedy my life: it gave me the platform and the purpose to playfully interrogate my own story and unravel the immature and sometimes toxic versions of events that my younger, traumatised brain had settled on. I have no doubt that without comedy I would not have had much of a chance in life, let alone been able to develop the kind of confidence and courage I needed to be able to ‘quit’. I believe that stand-up—with or without the comedy—is one of the greatest art forms there is. To be able to wrap your own voice around your own mind, and to be able to craft it into something that has the capacity to make a room full of strangers think and feel differently, even if it’s just for a moment in time, is an incredible and humbling thing to be able to do. Why would I want to quit that?

‘WHAT I HAD DONE WITH MY SHOW ABOUT COMING OUT OF THE CLOSET WAS FREEZE AN INCREDIBLY FORMATIVE EXPERIENCE AT ITS TRAUMA POINT AND THEN SEAL IT OFF WITH JOKES.

MY STORY BECAME MATERIAL, A ROUTINE, AND THEN THROUGH REPETITION THIS VERSION FUSED WITH MY ACTUAL MEMORY.

THE PROBLEM IS THAT MY JOKE VERSION WAS NOT NEARLY SOPHISTICATED ENOUGH TO ACCOMMODATE FOR THE DAMAGE DONE TO ME IN REALITY. YOU LEARN FROM THE PART OF THE STORY YOU FOCUS ON. I NEED TO TELL MY STORY PROPERLY.’ (NANETTE40:26)

I performed Nanette for the very last time at the Montreal Comedy Festival and it was a truly unsettling experience. It was after the special had dropped on Netflix, and I knew as soon as I walked onto the stage that something dramatic had shifted. The fever pitch that hit me was quite unlike anything I’d experienced before, and it gave me the impression that I could have toured Nanette indefinitely. There was clearly an audience for it, no doubt, but once her reputation preceded her, Nanette was no longer a viable show. That’s the tricky thing about Nanette, you see, because while she isn’t comedy, she also can’t exist without it. So, when people began applauding my setups and joining in with my punches, it was clear that a large chunk of the audience was too comfortable with their own thinking, and I knew it was over. As I walked off stage to rapturous applause, I understood I had to let her go.

Nanette belongs to the world now.

All plastic plants are an ecological hate crime.

Answer: Garden variety anxiety.

Ted Sarandos.

Witchcraft or white supremacy—only the algorithm can tell.

(tap, tap) ‘Hannah Gadsby would like you to know that . . . YOU’RE IT.’ (run away!)

In my defence, my best friend, Douglas, is a Dog.

And only.

Which might have been triggering had it not been so supremely uncanny.

I am a total ‘girrrl’ boss.

I am now financially secure—for the first time in my life. I am also white. Which remains a distinct advantage whether I acknowledge it or not.

Not to scale, however.

This is a very clever subtext joke about victim blaming. Which is not funny.

What? I am being kind.

I look forward to the time when there can be a public adult conversation about intersectionality.

G’day, mate.

Context would definitely float if you threw it in a river. As would I.

So let me get ahead of the curve as best I can. In Nanette, I kept using the term: ‘straight white man’. And what I should have said was ‘straight white cis man’. I also flicked around a few ‘fellas’ and ‘guys’, which was not cool, and I was too cavalier about generalising the experience of ‘women’. I regret not being more explicit about the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality (which is to say, my privilege), and for not being more consistent and careful about using language inclusive of non-binary and trans folk. I also used some dodgy language around mental illness, which I regret. I sincerely apologise for the harm I may have caused, and I hereby withdraw my availability to host the Oscars for the next ninety-nine years.

Which is to say, with great frequency and absolutely no humanity.

If you have been triggered at all by my anti-comedy, feel free to borrow my template to free yourself from your own prison of sads.

Except for the bits where I am ranting. That style is known as ‘angry archetypal man having a monologue’. Which is what many would call ‘pure comedy’.

STEP 2

FOUNDATION MYTHOLOGY

IN THE BEGINNING

The first time I stepped up to a microphone to do the jokes, I wasn’t at all anticipating that such a habit was to become my life. There wasn’t much about me up until that point that would have suggested I was a natural performer. I’d had next to zero exposure to any creative industries when I was growing up, and on the rare occasion I spoke, I was barely heard and I barely cared. When I first tried stand-up, I was in my late twenties and too old to begin a career that demands all the best habits of young people, such as late-night loitering, talking about yourself all the time and masking low self-esteem with false confidence. But I am a late-blooming type, so I took to it all very well.

Although my parents were always incredibly supportive of all their children’s ambitions, they, like most small-town folk of minimal means, were understandably biased toward more reliable career avenues, or at least ones that existed. So, it is unsurprising that Mum would sometimes stray into the badlands of active discouragement, like the time I declared, when I was about eight years old, that I wanted to be a dog when I grew up, and she counselled me to consider a more practical vocation, like not being so bloody stupid.

I tried to explain that I didn’t want to be just any old dog and told her of my intention of becoming a paratrooping German shepherd in the SAS. To which Mum sensibly replied, ‘The army wouldn’t let you join, sweetheart. You’ve got flat feet.’

Even when she would knock a dream dead the very first time she met it, there was always an immutable truth to be found at the root of her ‘no can do’ attitude. I think I was about twelve when she casually flicked my writing ambitions out of contention by observing, ‘But you don’t have anything to say. You have to be interesting to be a writer, you know.’

During the early stages of writing this memoir I began asking a lot of questions about what I was like when I was a little kid, but each time I broached the subject she would respond in a way that suggested she didn’t think it was any of my business who I am. ‘Why do you need to know that?’ she’d retort, as shocked and defensively as if I’d enquired about her post-menopausal habits of masturbation. The closest I ever got to an answer was a list of the defining traits of my siblings: Justin was the loving one, Jessica was the leader, Ben was the most intelligent, and Hamish was the funny one. This was likely just an attempt to encourage me to be more interested in other people, but I’m more inclined to believe she meant it as an inventory of qualities that do not apply to me.

Mum’s determined efforts to raise her children to become humble humans paid off, as I think all of us tend to use the good manners and self-deprecation she drilled into us more often than we don’t. But I don’t think her success was achieved entirely through encouraging good behaviour. Some credit does need to go to some of her more hard-line strategies, such as celebrating our successes through the metaphor of our failures. For example, when I won an award for creative writing in primary school, Mum made sure any pride I felt about awards was tempered with a sobering reminder that I still hadn’t made any friends.

I made my final attempt to express artistic ambition when I was a sullen fifteen-year-old and told Mum I wanted to be an artist. She asked me why I would want to become an alcoholic before adding, ‘Because you’ll wear a winter coat with holes in the pocket and your bottles of grog will keep falling out and smashing on the pavement.’

To this day, the specificity of her cautionary scenario still stuns me.

So when, at age twenty-seven, I told her that I was going to pursue a career as a stand-up comedian, I was shocked when instead of total resistance she was simply confused, exclaiming, ‘But I’m funnier than you!’

Such unbridled encouragement probably came from a sense of relief, because, although I had managed to avoid both alcoholism and artistry, I’d still carved out a fairly tragic existence for myself. At twenty-seven years of age, I was thoroughly unemployed, drifting, without a home and profoundly alone. I don’t think any of my friends or family really knew that my existence was so utterly grim, because to be fair, nor did I. I’ve only recently been able to comprehend just how terrible a life I’d been leading. Sure, I was alive, but that was about it; I didn’t have anything to look forward to, much less a dream to fall back on.

Perhaps if Mum had encouraged me like a ‘normal’ parent, then I might have ended up in the army, wearing camouflage orthotics and barking my orders like a dog, but I very much doubt I would’ve ever become interesting enough to be a writer with so much to say. And besides, even if my mum had taken to pumping me full of positive affirmations and other guff, I have no doubt that I would have still had a painful and slow start to my adult life, courtesy of my brain and the big old quirk built into the very heart of its function. And that’s why I can safely say I was only ever going to be a late bloomer in life.

ONCE UPON A TIME

I have a very clear memory from the day I was born, and I’m certain it is a complete fabrication. As a memory, it starts out believably enough with Mum relaxing on a hospital bed, propped up on a tripillow, drinking a cup of instant coffee, smoking a celebratory cigarette, and basking in the glow of me, her fifth child. After a moment, Mum stubs out her cigarette in an abalone shell and reaches for the phone on the bedside table and calls my dad with the wonderful news of me.

While it is feasible that I could have witnessed something like this as a newborn, it is harder to believe that I also saw my dad’s beaming face as he marched into my older siblings’ bedroom, gently waking them so they could all celebrate their new sister with a feast of green cordial and chips. If my memory is correct, which it clearly isn’t, given that I appear in two places at once, there should be four children celebrating with Dad, not two, and they should look something like my brothers and sister, but they don’t. They look like Dick and Fanny from The Magic Faraway Tree.

False memories aside, there is no doubting that I was born. Aside from my bodily existence, I also have a birth certificate that confirms the fact of my birth and that it happened in Burnie, Tasmania, in 1978. The only other primary resource I have is my mum, who, every time we’d drive past the Burnie Hospital, would point up to the window decorated with a giraffe and tell me that’s where I was born. I like giraffes but that is hardly a fact-check.

Mum says that I was an uneventful pregnancy, aside from a prolonged bout of indigestion, and she also insists that I was a very easy birth. I was her fifth child, so I tend to believe her. I probably came out like a slippery fish.

According to Mum, as soon as I took my first lungful of air I shat on the nurse, copping her right on the chest. Apparently, the doctor had joked, ‘It’s a good thing you’re not a foot shorter!’—the implication being that I would have shat on the nurse’s face. Mum loves this story. She applauds the doctor’s wit every time she tells it, but his joke has always troubled me. Most people instinctively hold a baby to their bosom, so I really don’t think a nurse would’ve held me to her face just because she was a foot shorter. All jokes aside, I still can’t escape the apparent fact that I began my life with a rather aggressive ablution.

LONG, LONG AGO

I was most likely two years old in my first genuine memory of life, because Mum says that’s how old I was when I got chickenpox. Mum’s clearly not a reliable source when it comes to facts, but I do remember being very low to the ground, so I may very well have been two. My brother Hamish is the only other player in this memory, and if I was two then he would’ve been four, and we were both covered in the horribly itchy red pock of the chicken.

The dining room floor also features quite heavily in this memory, which is a testament to its ugliness. It was a swirl of multi-toned brown, very thick of the pile and capable of hiding an enormous amount of debris. It was covered in stains and bared its threads at every doorway it approached. I grew up to loathe that carpet, though at the time of this memory I was still of an age when learning about the world meant accepting it wholesale.

In my little memory, Hamish and I were sitting on this sea of hairy chocolate—well, Hamish was managing to sit, whereas I was flopping about like a guppy out of water. Relief came in the form of distraction, when two giant pieces of cardboard and some delicious-looking crayons were placed in front of us. With my urge to scratch muted, I set about rendering a picture of a horse by a fence. (I can only assume that’s what I drew because it was a motif I revisited again and again throughout my childhood.)

I was pretty happy with my effort until I looked over at what Hamish had drawn. It was a masterpiece: a real human head with a smile, freckles, a pencil-thin neck and curly hair. I looked down, expecting my horse and fence to buoy my jealous spirits, but instead my gaze was met by a collection of indecipherable scribbles and I burst into tears, consumed by inferiority; and, to make it worse, my body was painfully itchy all over again. Eventually I was lifted off the carpet, scratching and bawling, and that is where my first coherent memory ends.

THERE ONCE WAS A CHILD

My family had established itself by the time I came onto the scene. Hamish was already the youngest, so I just got attached to him and we became known as ‘the little kids’. Our older siblings—Justin, Jessica and Benjamin—were known as ‘the big kids’. I should say at this point that all five of us were born within nine years of each other, so the big kids were quite small when they got their promotion, and despite Hamish and I now both being in our forties, we are still known as ‘the littles’.

As the little kids, Hamish and I spent an enormous amount of time in each other’s company. We were constantly playing games, most of which were the type that could produce a winner, and therefore a loser, and therefore I was always the latter. The two years between Hamish and I were the bane of my existence for most of my life. As a grown-up, this kind of age gap means absolutely nothing, but back then it was literally a lifetime. This is not to say I wasn’t competitive—our games were usually very fiercely fought—I just never quite managed to take home the trophy, which was a block of wood that Hamish had glued to another block of wood.

If Hamish had had it his way, however, he would’ve been in constant competition with Ben, but the three-year age gap between them was crueler to Hamish than ours was to me. Still, if ever Ben felt compelled to play against his younger brother, I would be dropped immediately and left to my own devices. I never felt particularly rejected whenever this happened, because I have always been particularly talented at the art of self-occupation. In fact, spending time alone was the one thing I was supremely better at than Hamish.

Simply filling up a bucket, emptying it and then filling it back up again could keep me occupied for hours. When the weather would drive me inside, there was still plenty to do. I could easily spend an entire afternoon drawing a horse by a fence over and over again or rearranging my half of the bedroom. There was also a monstrous collection of Lego that always needed stacking and sorting. You might be surprised to know that for all the hours I spent playing with Lego, I only ever managed to build a wall. Sometimes I’d attempt a corner, but not often, and I never aspired to roofing any of my builds. You see, without a competition or a brother to drive my sense of purpose, I was never interested in the results of any given activity. As far as I was concerned, the only reason to do something was so that you could do it again. And again. And again.

THE INFAMOUS FIVE

There were times, and as far as I was concerned, they were the most wonderful times, when the big kids joined forces with Hamish and I, and we would play as a pack. It was usually for something like a game of cricket, but on rare occasions we would turn our backyard into a town and pretend we were all pillars of the community. Our future lives could’ve easily been predicted through the roles we all chose when we played Towns. Hamish would always be the shopkeeper and sell bric-a-brac for Monopoly money, and now he keeps an actual shop and sells fruit and vegetables for real money. My oldest brother, Justin, would always be the town bus driver, and he is now a bus driver and he’s never considered any other job for himself. If ever there was a perfect opposite to myself, it is Justin. The only things we have in common are our parents. He is sunny, optimistic, welcoming, open, confident, boisterous, social, generous and kind; and as a kid, he had an unshakable commitment to imaginary play.

Justin once convinced Hamish and Ben to play a game called Bus Depot with him, which involved them re-riding their paper route on their bikes and pretending to deliver parcels. Justin had taken the game too seriously and hadn’t noticed his recruits were not really listening to him describe the rules. They weren’t listening because they were openly laughing at the way Justin was talking into his hand as if he were using a two-way radio, and how at the end of each sentence, he’d make the sound of static: ‘[schhhhhhhtttt] So, ah, you both have about five deliveries all up, over [schhhhhhhtttt]. It’s very important you deliver every parcel, over [schhhhhhhtttt].’

After finishing his instructions, Justin made one last static noise before riding off to do his share of the deliveries, at which point Hamish and Ben remember looking at each other, dropping their bikes to the ground, and going inside to watch the cricket. About three hours later the phone rang; it was Justin. By the time Ben hung up he was laughing so hard he could barely relay the message, because Justin was still communicating through an imaginary bus radio despite having just been hit by a car. Apparently, he’d been clipped by a car reversing out of a driveway, but miraculously, he wasn’t injured at all—probably because he’d been imagining so hard that his bike was a bus that the laws of physics had begun to believe it as well.