Anne Edmonds – Ever Since The Dawn Of Anne : MICF Interview

After the success of her debut Melbourne International Comedy Festival show- the delightfully titled Sing Us a Song, You’re the Piano, Anne- Melbourne-via-Darwin comic Anne Edmonds is back in 2011 with the equally hilarious and delightfully affable, Ever Since the Dawn of Anne.

Edmonds gave WOF some time to chat about her show, female comedians and the awesome banjo.

“This show is sort of like a mass confession…from about age eight to now, just trying to list all the things I’ve done wrong in my life”.

“Sometimes I do it I stand-up, or singing, or get a character going…very autobiographical, bit raw, but good fun. [It’s] narrative, character and musical comedy…bit of a combo deal. I play the banjo and a bit of piano, but I have an accompanist, Amy Bennett, who plays on stage with me. I write the songs and she plays them properly”.

So how did comedy become the love of your life?

“I’ve been doing comedy for four years; the first of two of which was sketch comedy in Darwin for the ABC…then I moved to Melbourne and got into live comedy. I started by doing my own show and RAW Comedy [Edmonds was a National Finalist in 2010] at the same time”.

Anne Edmonds

As Edmonds mentions the podcast (‘The Downlow’, check it out) she does with fellow local comics Kate McLellan and Geraldine Hickey, the subject of female comedians (my housemate tells me that ‘comedienne’ is offensive so I have since cut it from my lexicon) comes up and Edmonds takes her usual affirmative turn on the issue.

“I don’t mind if they look at me as a ‘female comedian’; the upside is, there’s not many of us, so when it comes time to market shows, you’re in a real minority. Most of the time when you do a stand-up slot, you’re the only female on but the other nice thing is that other female comedians are really supportive. I’ve found that, in Melbourne, it’s a great little community”.

“There are a lot of mediocre male comedians that just talk about Facebook and stuff that just fly under the radar; being a female comedian, you’re expected to be really good”.

Though regardless of sex, genre and age, Edmonds acknowledges the fierce competition around festival season…

“There’s a lot of goodwill, but when it comes to festival time…there’s three hundred and sixty shows, so naturally people are starting to look at whose getting what…but that’s healthy, it gets people working their best work”.

“There’s a lot of fear that goes along with comedy” Edmonds states, embracing stage fright for all its worth. “It is hard to get up there sometimes; it is hit and miss and it doesn’t always make sense as to why one night goes well and the next night doesn’t…that’s just the beauty of comedy. You’re always living in constant fear; you can never really be sure of yourself and the moment you are sure of yourself is when you’ll bomb next (laughs)”.