Australian comedienne Hannah Gadsby’s one-person show, Nanette (on Netflix), won a host of plaudits last year. It’s a riveting and extremely uncomfortable piece of work, so be warned: if you’re looking for laughs, this is not the place.
But it made me think long and hard about a lot of things: humour in general and, more specifically, the use of it to mask hurt and abuse. At the end of the show, Hannah says it will be her last, because she intends to deal with her pain properly rather than deflect it by making it funny (this isn’t a spoiler because I’m happy to report that the massively positive response made her change her mind).
A Fine Arts graduate, Hannah also talks about how women artists have been airbrushed out…
