Born: 12 January 1978, Australia
Died: NA
Country most active: International
Also known as: NA
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women founder Allison Tyra’s book The View from the Hill: Women Who Made Their Mark After 40.
Per their own website, “Hannah Gadsby has been a comedian for more than a decade but it was 2018 when the world took notice when their groundbreaking comedy special launched on Netflix and stopped the comedy world in its tracks.” The then-40-year-old’s groundbreaking special Nanette, which NPR stated “made the Australian comedian a household name,” called out the toxicity of much of professional comedy, with Gadsby stating their intent to quit comedy for their own mental health. “Punch lines need trauma because punch lines … need tension, and tension feeds trauma,” they observed, later following this with, “I must quit comedy. Because the only way … I can tell my truth and put tension in the room is with anger. And I am angry, and I believe I’ve got every right to be angry! But what I don’t have a right to do is to spread anger. I don’t. Because anger, much like laughter, can connect a room full of strangers like nothing else. But anger, even if it’s connected to laughter, will not… relieve tension. Because anger is a tension. It is a toxic, infectious… tension.”
Fortunately for their countless fans around the world, Gadsby did not, in fact, quit comedy as a career, later saying:
Well, it was always a theatrical conceit … when I was writing the show, I’m like, “People are not going to like this.” So, a way around that, intellectually, I’m like, “Well, if I quit comedy at the beginning, people can’t say that I did it wrong.” So, I quit in the middle of the show, and then I stopped doing comedy. Because it was an exhausting show to perform. So, there was a part of me that was like, “It would be nice to stop.” But things have happened.
Accused of breaking the rules of comedy, Gadsby replied:
Well, if they no longer make sense, I don’t mind breaking them. And I’m a student of art history, as well. I’ve seen this pattern in other art movements. It’s that, you know, changing of the guard. People break rules, they get accused of not being actual artists. And I was like, this is old news … You gotta make ’em laugh. That’s pretty much it. End on a laugh. Everything has to be funny. But if the only thing you have to do is make people laugh, then you stop thinking about what it is you’re saying.
In addition to the international recognition, Nanette earned Gadsby an Emmy, a Peabody, an Australian Academy Award, and the Most Outstanding Show awards at both the Melbourne Comedy Festival and Edinburgh Fringe, with further awards for their subsequent Netflix specials. Their 2022 memoir, Ten Steps To Nanette, became a New York Times bestseller.
IW note: Infinite Women respects gender identity, including non-binary and gender non-conforming identities. This person’s inclusion on IW is not intended to erase these identities, but rather to include anyone who has lived experience presenting as, and thus being treated as, female and who does not explicitly self-identify as male. IW values inclusion over exclusion and wishes to recognize as many different people and groups as we reasonably can.