spinofflive
felicity ward

PartnersApril 21, 2016

Interview: Comedian Felicity Ward on anxiety, depression and diarrhoea

felicity ward

The Australian comedian, performing in Auckland and Wellington next week, does toilet humour with a difference. She talks with Catherine McGregor about making comedy out of mental illness.

“God bless toilets. They’re a games room, they’re a prayer room, they’re a confessional, they’re a lounge room. They’re whatever you want them to be. I’m a big fan.”

If you’re bewildered by Felicity Ward’s love for the littlest room, then there’s a fairly good chance you don’t have Irritable Bowel Syndrome, or IBS. Ward does, and she’s not embarrassed to tell you about it. In fact, she dedicated an entire show – What if There is no Toilet?, playing next week in Auckland and Wellington as part of the NZ International Comedy Festival powered by Flick Electric Co.– to her long battle with the scatalogical affliction.

felicity ward

Actually, that’s not quite true: What if There is no Toilet? is about much more than dunny humour. “Ironically, I think this is the show of mine with the least number of poo jokes,” Ward says. Her IBS is just one symptom of the anxiety and depression she’s dealt with for most of her adult life, and talking about it is part of a larger bid to reduce the stigma around mental illness.

“I don’t really care about ‘creating awareness’ of mental illness; I’d rather people donated money to mental health charities than gained awareness,” she says. “What the show creates is a place that people can come and for an hour not feel like they’re a freak. The toilet stuff is so embarrassing – you’re an adult and you’re having an IBS attack and you’re thinking ‘Oh my god, this only happens to four year olds, I can’t tell anyone.’ And what the show does is tell you you’re not the only one who is experiencing this.

“Whenever I talk about stuff that can be embarrassing – whether it’s IBS or anxiety or depression – I have people coming up to me after the show and saying ‘Oh my god I can’t believe someone else has the same issues I do.’”

The link between comedy and mental illness is nothing new; examples of the sad clown stereotype are almost too many to mention, from Tony Hancock to Robin Williams to Sarah Silverman. But Ward says she’s never seen the stand-up mike as a form of public therapy.

“It’s not fair on the audience to be making emotional discoveries about yourself while you’re telling jokes. I think you’ve got to sort your shit out before you talk about it on stage.”

But talking about the issues, that’s valuable. In fact Ward has made transparency about mental illness something of a crusade, using her experiences as a bedrock of her comedy and in 2014 fronting the Australian TV documentary Felicity’s Mental Mission.

“When I first discovered I had these issues, my friends never talked about it. Only later I found out that a bunch of them had what I had. And I was actually angry: ‘I thought I was the only one, you didn’t say anything, I felt like a freak.’ And so now I’m glad to be able to talk openly about it, and make people laugh.

“The show is for everyone but I don’t mind at all if lots of mentally ill people come. There’s a joke I tell: ‘I went to the doctor and told him what was going on with me, and what that means is I lied.’ And people with mental illness will really laugh at that. It’s hard to be honest with your doctor, with yourself. It’s like when your doctor asks your weekly alcohol intake and you say ‘Oooh, about two or three?’ and they’re like, ‘It’s closer to 15, isn’t it?”.

The exuberantly filthy Australian has long been a TV regular in her home country and is gaining fans fast in the UK, where she’s lived for the last three years. A friend recently remarked that London life was starting to soften Ward’s gloriously brash accent. “And I was so disappointed. Why would I want to lose it? This is who I am.”

Felicity Ward: What if There is no Toilet?

AUCKLAND
Dates: Tue 26 – Sat 30 April, 8.30pm
Venue: Herald Theatre, Aotea Centre, 50 Mayoral Dr
Tickets: Full $30, Concession $25, Groups 6+ $25 Cheap Wednesday $24 (service fees apply)
Bookings: aucklandlive.co.nz

WELLINGTON
Date: Sun 1 May 7pm
Venue: San Fran, 171 Cuba St
Tickets: $25 – $28 (service fees apply)
Bookings: iticket.co.nz  

Keep going!
outlanderfeature

LightboxApril 18, 2016

“Forecast for Jamie’s hair: sultry, but changeable” – Thoughts from Outlander S02E02

outlanderfeature

Our resident Outlander fanatic Tara Ward shares her thoughts from the much-anticipated return of time-travel romance series. Contains spoilers. And smoulders. 

This week, Claire and Jamie head for Paris, where their ‘to do’ list consisted of:
1) infiltrating the French royal court
2) drinking all the profits from their new business
3) living a life of luxury while wondering how their life became so complicated

Who will the Frasers offend this week? How many new frocks will Claire score, and will she drink all the wine? Let’s find out.

1) Jamie’s nightmare gives us all the shits

Screen Shot 2016-04-17 at 10.25.26 PM

This was my exactly my response when Claire’s sex face morphed into Black Jack’s sex face. The opening credits are barely finished and we’re faced with this god-awful, face stabbing, blood spurting zombie sex tribute?  No, no, no, Outlander!

I get that Jamie is suffering from his experiences at Wentworth, but for the love of all things kilty MUST WE ALL BE FORCED TO LIVE THIS NIGHTMARE?

1

Happy thoughts, think happy thoughts. Ginger curls. Wee Roger’s dimples. Frank wearing his 1940s high-waisted trousers.

Screen Shot 2016-04-07 at 7.32.25 PM

“I won’t be getting any more sleep tonight,” Jamie muttered. Neither will I, Big Red.

2) Let them eat cake, Claz

“Running a great house in Paris had proved more complicated than I could have ever imagined.” The struggle is real. #prerevolutionproblems

Screen Shot 2016-04-17 at 7.13.16 PM

3) Get a load of the French side-eye

Screen Shot 2016-04-17 at 10.28.34 PM

4) Forecast for Jamie’s hair: sultry, but changeable

The thought of meeting new BFF Bonnie Prince Charlie in a brothel was enough to make Jamie’s hair curl.

Screen Shot 2016-04-17 at 10.42.43 PM

5) We learn more about the private life of the French than we ever need to know

What better place to discuss an uprising than at a brothel? “They do find unique ways to enjoy themselves,” Jamie observed, knee deep in prostitutes and sex-toys as he discussed the ins and outs of the Jacobite campaign with the Prince. “They’re a sorry bunch of sodomites who cannae please their women,” Murtagh grumped. Each to their own, eh, M-Dog?

Screen Shot 2016-04-17 at 8.44.34 PM

6) Murtagh should work for the Scottish Tourist Board

If Bonnie Prince Charlie is the outstretched hand of God, then Murtagh is God’s elastic tongue of truth. He hates France (“it’s the air – arses and armpits!) and Bonnie Prince Charlie (“the man is a blockhead”). Meanwhile, Scotland is a sacred land of “simple people, with no great love for outsiders”. He even washes his knees to meet the King. That beard, that bark, that burr. What a bloke.

Screen Shot 2016-04-17 at 8.53.05 PM

7) Politics schmolitics, what about my new dressing gown

Screen Shot 2016-04-17 at 8.46.54 PM

8) Louise de Rohan gives us advice to live by

“The bite of the man is desirable. The bite of the monkey? Not so much.”

Screen Shot 2016-04-17 at 9.46.27 PM

9) Riddle me this: beware the complicated honeypot with the unthatched roof located in the barren forest of love

Any other euphemisms for an eighteenth century Parisian Brazillian? No? Good. Let’s move on.

Screen Shot 2016-04-17 at 9.44.44 PM

10) Versailles’ milkshakes bring all the monsieurs to the yard

Next stop on the Kim Kardashian Tour of Paris™ is Versailles, where Claire wears a smoking new frock to show the Jacobites that a woman doesn’t wear a dress cut to her navel unless she’s really serious about kicking some partisan arse.

Screen Shot 2016-04-17 at 9.01.27 PM

Murtagh was right about the arses and armpits – Versailles is overflowing with the bloody things. King Louis needs a Mexican wave of testosterone to move his bowels, Jamie is nearly swallowed whole by his ex-girlfriend’s giant sleeves, and what about this poor woman who forgot to put on her top before she left the chateau?

Screen Shot 2016-04-17 at 9.22.03 PM

It’s like the time I went to Countdown with my skirt tucked into my knickers, and nobody told me until I got to the frozen food aisle. It’s only funny the first time, btw.

11) Jon Bon Jovi is also a time traveller

In an astonishing and unexpected twist, Jon Bon Jovi just fell out of the fireplace.

Screen Shot 2016-04-17 at 9.58.03 PM 

12) News just in: Black Jack is still alive

Those hairy coos had one job to do. ONE JOB.

Screen Shot 2016-04-17 at 9.23.29 PM

P.S. Welcome back, Sandringham, you are wicked and fabulous and I love you.

13) The fireworks are a metaphor for what’s going on in Claire’s brain

Screen Shot 2016-04-17 at 9.32.09 PM

Double thumbs up, Outlander, there were more twists and turns in that episode than a medium-to-fast hydroslide – and that was just keeping track of Jamie’s hair length. As the old Scottish saying goes, may the sun always rise to meet you, may the wind always be at your back, may your armpits always be hairless, and may your honeypot never fall out of whack.


 

Pour yourself a dram and dive into the new season Outlander on Lightbox below (new episodes arriving every Sunday at 7pm)

SpinOff_WatchNow_Blue

This content, like all television coverage we do at The Spinoff, is brought to you thanks to the excellent folk at Lightbox. Do us and yourself a favour by clicking here to start a FREE 30 day trial of this truly wonderful service.

But wait there's more!