Tit’s Up | Good Chat Comedy Club
I went to a comedy show on Friday. This is not a regular kind of gig for me. In fact, other than a couple television specials and the odd skit in a cabaret, I pretty much have not seen any comedy. It’s just not on my radar. I mostly live on a solid diet of circus with some serious theatre and contemporary dance thrown in for variation. But this was fascinating. And stoopidly fun. And really easy to enjoy.
Tit’s Up is a new comedy scratch night with an all femme line-up. It’s brought to you by the Good Chat Comedy Club, who are doing good things to try and shake up the comedy scene in Brisbane, make it fresh and more accessible and less like all the bad things you hear about comedy. And it looks like it’s working. The sold-out room was filled out with little cabaret tables and felt like we had stepped into an underground Edinburgh drinking hall. After a year of awkward zoom dates and a complete lack of laughter-filled ambience, this was the ticket.
Even in my comedy-free life the cliché of the depressed male comic is a commonality This threw this on its head. I’ve said it before, I love seeing young women who are free. The all-femme line-up was joyous to behold. This lot were historically cracking themselves up between sets, there was gratuitous hilarity, off-the-cuff improv, costumes of dubious quality (for the freshly named Hallow-eve) and prizes for people in the audience who pretended they were dressed up, because they forgot to ask us to come in dress up. It was chaotic and carefree and yes, stupid good fun.
I also found myself enjoying watching the craft of stand up, cause craft it is. There is an assumption that comedy is all about the jokes and the script, but I can already see there’s a lot more going on here. The whole body gets into it, the face, the timing, being able to read the room. I don’t have the right kind of language to describe it yet – but I’m intrigued enough that I want to find out. Our hosts Francesca Rossi-Price and Jaimeson Gilders are debonair and ridiculous, a winning combination, keeping us entertained between three sets in a range of styles from Jemma Bayley, Shannon Brooke and Anisa Nandaula, before a raucous closing skit from the hilarious sketch group Little Bitts.
There was something really welcoming about an all-woman line-up. There was no bros club vibes, no borderline sexist jokes to bore the women in the crowd, no locker room humour, plenty of smut but all of it was self-directed, this was art that punches up – and really there should be no other kind – nobody made anyone uncomfortable, except in a nerdy kind of way, and it was a real relief to be honest.
It was a solid way to spend a Friday night. Would go again. Would recommend.
