Commentary: Hannah Gadsby’s “Woof!” barks a new message in queer stand-up “our comedy is for us”
Sitting in front of me is Hannah Gadsby. On my computer. It’s very disconcerting. For both of us. We are here to talk about “Woof!”— their new comedy show, which lands in L.A., for one night only this Sunday at the United Theater on Broadway.
Gadsby has had a huge impact on me as an artist: inspiring my stand-up persona, 7G, to be as fearless as them in comedy while working through my greatest hits of trans, intersex and queer trauma history, with an audience.
I tell Gadsby I’m wearing blue as I know it’s their favorite color and blue is very calming for their autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
Meanwhile, it’s not calming me. My serenity has slid and I’m sweating and getting more anxious by the second.
Thankfully, for both of us, my emotional support beagle, Scotty, runs in from the yard and gaily jumps on the sofa. I introduce him to Gadsby, and they call their off-camera wife, Jenno (producer Jenney Shamash, to you and me) to admire him too. We all agree he is a very good boy, and I start to relax.
Back to the tour. Our mutually devoted dog love-in is a perfect segue into talking about “Woof!” and how the tour is going. “It’s been going really well; we’re just about wrapping up, which I’m not terribly sad about. The show is finally in its final form. I’m always fiddling with the show, as I tour it.”
Gadsby’s show “Douglas” was named after their now sadly departed dog. Asked about the origins of “Woof” Gadsby wasn’t giving very much away. “Most of my shows are about things that have happened a long time ago, or I’ve been thinking about a long time,” Gadsby said. “And I think this show was trying to look directly at something as it was happening, or fairly close. And what we learned is, I have trouble processing. The show is a lot about that.”
Coming to the end of their eight-month stretch on the road, touring is taking its toll. “I’m pretty fatigued at this end of a tour. I’m getting a little old. ... ‘Nanette’ aged me. That is what is. I was not gray before, and I’m definitely gray now.”
In case you missed it, Gadsby’s 2018 special “Nanette” launched the comedian into the American consciousness and inspired plenty of academic papers for its hourlong emotional roller coaster of a special, filmed in front of a packed Sydney Opera House. Some academic writing and reviews have called “Nanette” the most important comedy special since Richard Pryor’s “Live in Concert” (1979).
“Nanette” began as a complete nightmare for Gadsby, onstage back in Perth, Australia, with just a handful of joke ideas and pertinent painful talking points on cue cards, and slowly evolved over more than 250 live performances.
As Gadsby toured “Nanette,” they found themself exploring the very nature of comedy, breaking down the traditional joke form of set-up/punchline, and deconstructing what a comedy special can be. They even threatened to leave comedy — then, thankfully, didn’t.
Instead of just staying home with a well-deserved nice cup of tea and putting their feet up for a few years, Gadsby has doubled down, giving us “Douglas” (2020), followed by “Something Special” (2023), and then uplifting young LGBTQ+ comics in “Hannah Gadsby’s Gender Agenda” (2024).
As if all that weren’t enough, Gadsby also wrote a 377-page autobiography, titled “Ten Steps to Nanette.” It’s one hell of a life story: a classic Hollywood tale (albeit set in Australia) of rags to riches.
Gadsby has lived through so much trauma and achieved so much despite having debilitating mental health challenges and navigating this show business world — one that’s very triggering if you are an autistic person — they are functioning at a higher level than the majority of us. “You know, when you don’t come from money, all you have to do is work,” Gadsby said.
Stand-ups don’t have an employer per se, but Hannah has found a home at Netflix, despite biting the hand that feeds them, the Netflix “Daddy” (their word), Ted Sarandos. Watch their “Gender Agenda” for the most exquisite roast of the Netflix CEO.
Sarandos didn’t take it too badly but did get some probably unintentional get-back by throwing a party for Gadsby — who is definitely not a party person. “I remember the last show with Netflix they put on an opening party for me, the ‘Queer Eye’ boys and the Queer Ultimatum. And it was in a nightclub and it was like they said, ‘OK, Hannah, what could be the worst possible thing you could experience? OK, we’ll do that.’ That’s when I had the first inkling that perhaps Netflix didn’t like me. That’s a joke. No, I’d had it long before that.” Another joke, or is it? We don’t know anymore.
Gadsby never expected to blow up in the U.S., and the sudden success brings many new challenges. “One of the less spoken about things in show business is, the more success you have, the more people who make money off you, the less encouraged you are to take care of your mental health. I have a particularly good team, I’d say,” they said. “But I do feel like I’ve been putting my brakes on ever since ‘Nanette’ dropped. I’ve been incredibly overwhelmed. A lot of the markers of show business are not friendly to me, like a step-and-repeat is my absolute worst nightmare.”
I get this battle with image and mirrors. As a transmasc person who transitioned later in life, and had my 38DD tits off only this past July, what a f— relief, I never thought I looked hot. Until the stubble grew in! Gadsby just can’t do fake. Ironically, that authenticity is what makes them look by far the coolest of all the cool people in the Netflix Is a Joke Festival comedy family photo, gathered around Netflix Daddy’s magnificent L.A. pool.
Despite all the tours, TV specials, and a New York Times Best Seller book, Gadsby doesn’t see themselves as being “officially successful.”
“What I’ve understood about myself and my place in this is that, in order to be successful, you have to play the game,” Gadsby said. “And I don’t like playing the game. I’m playing a game, but being autistic, I’m parallel playing.
“But I look at the landscape at the moment and sort of think, why would you want to be king of this s— hill?”
What does Gadsby think about the shape of things to come under Trump? “I think we’ve built a world where we’re like, we can get everything done if we trick ourselves with the reward of money and prioritize that. And people who make money are the people who should be leading us. Because, wow, if you can make money, you must really know what people need, forgetting in fact that most people who prioritize making profit tend to do very awful things in order to prioritize making money.”
Many in our LGBTQiA+ community are really struggling; our mental health has been hit hard by knowing that half of this country voted for an agenda that doesn’t respect queer and trans people’s rights and humanity, Gadsby says. “You know, I think at this point in time, it’s important not to be too doom and gloom. But I can only feel doom and gloom for this. We’ve been weaponized, and that’s just the bottom line.”
I tell Gadsby about “Alphabet Soup Comedy”, the eclectic comedy and variety show Alyssa Poteet and I took to Edinburgh Festival last year: with five other up-and-coming comics serving a different soup of the Alphabet People every day, bringing our whole community together, under one roof, to laugh as one and release the enormous stress we are all feeling.
Gadsby loves this, and concurs. “Yeah, I think it’s time to stop trying to talk to people who hate us and to entertain ourselves. I think we’ve been thrown under the bus, and I think we should work for ourselves now; our comedy is for us, I think we just need that.”
What can we say to that? Except, “Woof!”
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