Nanette - No Laughing Matter

As I awkwardly rushed into the Soho Theatre I had no idea what to expect of the nights performance, and little did I care. All I had in mind was running back to see my visiting American friends that I had abandoned at a near by bar. I was pleasantly surprised to figure out that what was about to transpire on stage was a comedy show, being that I am a huge comedy nerd. As the show commenced I was half listening to the material and half watching the time on my phone. Hannah Gadsby was doing the typical stand-up routine I had seen a million times before and although I enjoyed it I can't say that my attention was diverted from my stranded group of friends, but then the energy of the room changed and grew more tense as the jokes began to lessen in regularity. Gadsby did something I had only seen the very best stand-ups do before; she sacrificed getting a laugh and winning the audience over in order to speak honestly about her life and views. I've always heard that most comedians deal with depression in their lives, and this for some reason made sense to me, since I always felt that comedy wasn't a line of work for the mediocre or normal. You have to be a little fucked up to get on an empty stage and try to make strangers laugh. However, Gadsby is very unique from that cliche depressed comedian persona because she lay bear that side of herself that most comedians try so hard to hide. By the end of the show I was in tears, not from laughter but from pure catharsis. I was moved by the sincere retelling of her life story and by the vigor in which she exposed the hypocrisy and fraud in our society. It is safe to say that I will never look at a Picasso painting the same way again, or in that case any art. She opened my eyes to so many things about culture, depression, womanhood, and made me realize the potential power stand-up comedy has as a medium for change. Life isn't always funny, sometimes we have to be serious and I think that same should go for stand-up.