Girls to The Front | Good Chat Comedy
On the closing night of Wynnum Fringe 2021, I entered the Bayside-Dance-School-turned-comedy-club and prepared myself for my first ever stand-up show. The thought of watching stand-up comedy has scared me almost as much as the thought of performing stand-up comedy - the pressure of having to laugh on demand has always felt too great. At least during Netflix specials, I don’t have to feel the gentle tug of obligatory laughter; my silence doesn’t feel quite so immediate or intimate. Particularly when, for the most part, my engagement with this field has been through the long list of famous men who’ve risen through its ranks. Perhaps events such as the 2021 Melbourne Comedy Festival would’ve enticed me more if they didn’t just decide to include seven women within the 24-act line-up and call it a day. The commonality of this disparity in comedy programming is why Girls to The Front, An All-Femme Comedy Showcase presented by Good Chat’s Comedy, still felt so momentous.
Warmed and guided by the hilarious Ting Lim, the night was a riotous display of some great Brisbane comics. More than just the sum of its laughs, Girls to The Front felt like a celebration of talent, of life, of stories, of the things that define us and those that bring us together. I was reminded of the sheer connective power of comedy, the way it builds tension only so that the audience may collectively feel its release. Alongside this, experiencing someone take command of the humour that oxygenates a room is an incredibly humanising experience. I found myself seriously confronting some ingrained biases that I had been privileged enough to not even recognise existed. That’s the benefit of having diverse line-ups and why they are so necessary, as they allow us to reassess our social norms and still have a great time.
Headlined by Jaimeson Gilders, the performers of Girls to The Front were women as powerful in their presence as they were in their talent. Jo Gowda and Alexandra Hudson were stand outs for me, as they found impeccable and hilarious ways to integrate their own lived experiences within stories of motherhood, and the search for a good root, respectively.
Hysterical is a term that’s been hurled at and used against women since the early 1600s, working to undermine their experience by “diagnosing” a female specific neurotic condition. Originating from the Latin hystericus, meaning “of the womb”, the term continues to hold serious social implications for the ways women are viewed and discussed. Yet to me it seems no coincidence that in its alternate definition the word also implies the type of humour capable of leaving one bursting at the seams. Maybe it’s easier said than done, but I vote the renegotiation of a word that’s etymology is a fabricated side-effect of womb possession, and instead goes to show how fucking hilarious we are.
What Girls To The Front really left me with was a sense of excitement, an anticipation of the switch; when female comedians become just comedians, and an all-female line-up can just be a line-up.
