The Chaser Report - ARVO: It's About Time with Alice Fraser

Episode Date: March 29, 2022

Legendary comedian Alice Fraser joins Gabbi and Charles for an Arvo Chat. Alice lets the team see behind the curtain and learn her process for writing her shows. Alice also talks about being at the centre of a murder mystery, being an academic at heart, and the difference between a banjo and a ukulele. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chase of Report. Hello and welcome to The Chase of Report for Tuesday, the 29th of March. I'm Charles Firth. We're here with Gabby Bowles. Hello. And special, special guest, Alice Fraser. Hello. Hi. I'm very excited to be here.

It's been a long time since I last hung out with you. Yes, yes, years and years and years. Probably 10 years or so. We're talking to you partly because your show is. is on in Melbourne from this Thursday, isn't it? It starts on Thursday. It goes all the way to the 24th of April. Then you've also got to run in Sydney, 5th to the 8th of May and in Perth on the 13th and 14th of May. Yes. So you're going everywhere. London and then Edinburgh is going all the way. Oh, wow. And you're taking to Edinburgh? All right. I mean, assuming

there isn't a nuclear war. Yes. Crazy. Why don't we go to a break and we'll talk to you straight after this. The Chaser Report, news a few days after it happens. Now, Alice, what's your show about? Well, it's called Kronos, which means time, and it's sort of about time. It's set on a train. It's set on the train that I wrote it on, the very first version of this show. I wrote it on the train on the way to the first preview, at a deadline.

It was a four-and-a-half-hour train from London to Glasgow on May the 7th, And I performed it that night, and I have not performed it since. And of course, I've rewritten it many, many times, but the whole show now is kind of about the process of rewriting and the time and what I planned and what I thought then and what I think now and how it's all set on this train journey. And the train is a metaphor for life. Yes. I love it. The only thing is, though, that you can't stop the progress of time, that you can stop the progress of a train as people in Sydney. will attest.

Yes, yeah, certainly you can. That, I'm afraid, has been left out of the logic in the show. Because the train is a metaphor and you cannot stop a metaphors. Ah, they're very nice. I was going to say, yeah, metaphors have no time for Sydney trains. And so I still don't quite understand what it's about, though. I mean, what is any show about? Yeah, that's exactly right.

You know what? I don't know what my show is about. I can tell you some of the things that it's about. Because essentially it's about what I think, you know, and what I thought. and what I think about what I thought and how time works. And, you know, like, just. And is the reason, I'm assuming the reason why you only performed a once, wasn't because it was so bad that nobody wanted to put it on again.

I'm assuming that maybe COVID, is it? Yes, yes, it was COVID. I flew out two days later. I spent two weeks in an Airbnb because it was just before we'd brought in hotel quarantine. I spent two weeks in an Airbnb with a police car parked outside. And I thought, wow, what incredibly. good border controls we have. And then I realized it was because there was a murderer upstairs.

It wasn't for me at all. So it was okay. Wait a second. You have to go more into that. So hold on. I say I realized I was told later. I'm not a deductive person. I wasn't like a detective.

Had the police placed you there as bait, hoping you'd be murdered and they could catch him in the... This sounds like a trip from hell. It was fine. It was really nice little Airbnb. Was it written up in the Airbnb description? Did it say, oh, and by the way, there's a murder upstairs? There's a murder upstairs. No, I did not know until afterwards.

I thought the police car was there for me to stop me from breaking my quarantine. And did you mark down the Airbnb on the ratings afterwards when you found out? Oh, no, a bit of excitement. Oh, okay, right. Colorful local characters. You know, I'm sure there's a box you can tick in the Airbnb Review. It would be. You know, would you want more or less murderers living about...

For fans of dark and gritty Danish cop dramas. Were they like a run-of-the-mill murderer or were they kind of weird? I never met the murderer because I was in self-isolation. I only heard about the murderer. And at one point the police knocked on my door and asked if he was home at this person. And I can't say his name because I'm not sure if he actually was a murderer or just a suspected murderer or if he is a murder and got away with it. Yeah, probably best not to sort of mention the murderer.

I can say it was a he because, I'm amazed. I mean, statistically speaking, but they knocked on my door, I think, thinking that I was perhaps the murderer and asked if he was home and I said no. And then I said also, go away. I'm in self-isolation. And they sort of backed off a few steps. It was fun. And so have you had COVID yet?

I have not. I have escaped COVID. So you've escaped COVID, but you've got a kid. Yes. And you're going to be too, or do you want to talk about that or do you not want to talk about it? You don't get a kid by people breathing on you. No. That was what I thought happens.

That's what my wife told me. Yeah, 20 years. Been terrified. Okay. But like. What do you mean like I don't have COVID but I have a kid the worst disease? Like what's the, I don't know. It's just like.

How are these two ideas linked in your head? I don't know. We never know. They just both make you really tired. Instead of almost worse It'd be preferable to just have COVID and have to do a Melbourne comedy festival show You've got a little child

And you're going to be doing I can't infect my audience with pregnancy Though So that's the upside Although arguably getting pregnant Would kill an 89 year old Okay well then Maybe we should just go back to the show

So okay The show is about everything What in particular I don't quite know how to answer that. I'm very bad at reflecting on my shows. I think they sort of, because they reflect who you are, it's sort of like somebody asking you to describe who you are. It sort of slightly bounces between like high academic and lowbrow humor.

I talk about rich dogs and death and Elon Musk and, you know, whether any of us should have children and the environment and all sorts of things, you know. Okay. Well, and so do you think... But it all comes together and then it looks like it made sense at the end. Yeah, and you leave. I've been to shows like that where you leave going, wow, that was so profound.

And then about five minutes later you can't recall anything about how it all fitted together. Yeah, well, so I like to write my, I can tell you what my show is like rather than what it is about. It's like a detective novel. I write my show is like I write a detective novel. So I want people to come away feeling like they've solved it. Like there's a satisfying solution at the end of the show. But during the show, I'll just sort of say one thing and another,

and you're not quite sure while they're there, but it's actually evidence sort of building up towards this sort of satisfying conclusion because I'm really into like the way that structure can build on itself and give you that satisfying feeling. But the problem is we already know who the murderer is, which is the guy upstairs. I feel like you've spoiled it. The next show after this trilogy has completed its run.

I think you need to write the murderer upstairs. I really do because you can make it anything you want, really, but it would be brilliant. It's such a great premise. I mean, it's a terrifying premise, but yes. And what's it like doing Edinburgh? It's incredible. It's sort of, I've had a really good experience with Edinburgh.

I know some people don't, but it's like being in a fairy city. So it's like an alternate dimension where for a month, everyone in the entire city believes in art, and money is worth nothing and time isn't valuable it doesn't mean anything and you're waking up at 4 o'clock in the morning

and you're watching somebody do jazz I'll give you an example of my first night and my first Edinburgh I went to like a mixer like a drinks thing and I got chatting to a Korean dance troupe who was doing an all-dance version of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard

Oh lovely brilliant Yeah there were about four of them And then a couple came up and they were a Japanese couple who were doing a Mime version of Macbeth. And we were all talking to each other, and the Koreans didn't speak any Japanese. The Japanese didn't speak any Korean. Neither of their English was particularly good, but they were all incredibly good at mime. So I was just there being like, this is incredible.

That was my first night. And it's all like that. It's all just completely off the wall, amazing people doing really weird stuff that you would never even imagine being a thing, and they've turned it into a career. Yeah, yeah, because I was trying to somebody who said, Oh, no, the absolute prime, if you're putting on theatre, what you want to get is the 1pm slot. That is like prime time for putting on a plate at Edinburgh.

It's going, what is this crazy place? Where you can just go to stuff in the day. It doesn't exist in Australia. Yeah, shows start at 10 a.m. And they go all the way through to 4 o'clock in the morning, at 5 o'clock in the morning. And then there's obviously going to be some sort of guided tour to dawn. Like, it's just, there was a guy who had a baby

whose show was, you'd come to his hotel room and he did the show, but if the baby needed a change or was crying, you just had to put up with it. That was the artistic premise of his show, was like, come watch me parent. Charles, I just found a genre for you. Yeah, that's great. You can just bring your teenage sons

and just, we can watch them play video games. And if they need their nabids change, then it'll be very weird. It does. I mean, like, it's so weird, though, because I feel like I've wanted to go to Edinburgh for a while. I think before I even wanted to go to Edinburgh to do comedy, I've always thought that Scotland and Edinburgh would be like a really cool place to go. But then even to me, because I've never been to Edinburgh, Melbourne feels like that?

Like the last time I went to Melbourne during Comedy Festival, it did feel like, oh, there's a show at midnight, and time's not real, and I have no responsibilities here. And I think I just ignored my emails for like a week and a half because I just, I was like, I'm in Melbourne. Like I don't, nothing matters. Email doesn't exist here in Melbourne. Yeah.

Yeah, nothing matters. It's a very, I feel like that's exactly what comedy festivals do to you. Adelaide was the same. I was just in Adelaide for a week and I was like, I'm in Adelaide, nothing's real. Yeah, that's sort of the festival vibe, but Edinburgh just sort of layers that over. It's like a thousand times, like a milfoy kind of treat of just that to the ultimate degree. And then also it's in this like incredible medieval city that was, you know, the pinnacle of civilization at its time. So you're walking around this city thinking when this was at its peak, when this city was at its like primacy,

you'd go 10 kilometres to the left and everything would be mud huts. So people coming to this city would have been like, it would have been like going to Star Trek. It's just like they wouldn't have seen anything like this incredible constructions and the like beautiful castles and it's, you know, it's amazing. Like I can't speak highly enough of it.

Also, you will lose all of your money and your health. Yeah, yes. Yes, you must get very sick if you're going from 10 a.m. to 4 a.m. every day. See, this is the thing. People get two weeks in and then they have a. nervous breakdown but i am uh incredibly boring so i don't drink and i like eat healthy food but if you're drinking every night and eating deep fried mars bars and then two weeks in you have a nervous break day and breakdown and they're like oh yeah edinburgh's really hard i'm like no no no you just

went too hard deliberately destroyed yourself the chaser report now with extra whispers so this is the third show in a trilogy of shows isn't it yes Love a trilogy. And both, the first two, the first one was called the resistance, is there right? No, so this is my second trilogy. Oh my God. So wait a minute. So I did Savage the Resistance and Empire.

That's the Alice Fraser trilogy available on ABC Podcasts. Also Savage is available on Amazon Prime. Second trilogy was going to be, and this is going to make me sound like an absolute wanker. No, go for it. Ethos, Logos and Pathos. Love it. Oh, lovely. Fundamentals of Aristotelian Rhetoric.

Ethos, who you are, Logos, the logic or structure of what you're doing, or pathos, the feeling of what you're doing. That's very loosely described. But I did ethos, which was my robot show, or I did a double act with a robot. It was about who you are and what is it to be a person and like, does who's delivering the line matter? So that was ethos. And then I was going to do logos and I realized if I wrote Logos, people would read it

as logos. No! So I did ethos mythos. And then I thought pathos is a really sad show for a name for a comedy show. It's ethos, mythos, and chronos. Right. So that's what I... God, you're a machine.

Do people have to do their homework to make sense of this show? Like, should they watch your ethos show on Amazon Prime? I mean, I argue that everyone should always watch everything that everyone's ever done. But no, absolutely not. No, the show makes sense. In fact, is it better to not watch it because it'll spoil things? Like, is it, because we know the murderer, like, is it, neither of those things. It's more like if you're interested in the themes and then this show feels like there are some Easter eggs and it will draw to a conclusion, some of the arguments that I made across all three shows.

So it will work if you haven't seen them, but it will work in a sort of a slightly more satisfying way. Do you get a PhD or something once you've completed all your shows? Well, that was the thing. It was for me. It was deciding when I quit law. It was deciding between comedy and academia, right? That was the call, and I decided on comedy. But I think there is a little bit of secret academia in me.

Can I ask, when you're writing all of these shows, because my biggest thing is I kind of write sort of, because I'm a musical comedian, I kind of write the songs and then the show kind of pieces together like a jigsaw. And I feel like at the end of it, there is nothing that I set up at the beginning that ties itself and a knot at the end because of the way I wrote it. But when you're writing these amazing, like, trilogies,

do you visualize how they're going to go first and then you kind of write the shows within that format? Or do you, like, just find the plots as you go? So it's because I write them like a detective novel, I start with the how it's going to end. Or, like, not even how it's going to end, but like where I want people to be emotionally at the end, like the feeling I want them to have, the kind of that.

And then I kind of work backwards from there. Wow. And so then in that way, the trilogy, if I'm mapping it out in the future, it's not like what the story is or what the jokes are or anything like that. It's just sort of what the vibe is. Yeah, what you want the audience to do. Yeah, how I want them to feel, what I want to give to the audience, the kind of emotional thing.

So good. I just don't know I'm learning so much. I mean, it's good in theory, but isn't good in practice. Find out by buying tickets to my show. And do you play the banjo in this one? I do, yes. I usually play like one or two songs. I'm not a musical comedian, but I have the banjo as a kind of a crutch.

I guess when I started out comedy, it was so marked. If I walked on stage just as me as a young lady, as I was then, not a young lady anymore. Not an old lady, just a lady doing shit. But I would get on stage and like Australian audiences would recoil. They'd sort of lean back and they'd cross their arms and they'd be like, who do you? women weren't funny back then. Yeah, yeah. How dare you think that, you know, you're worth paying money to buy tickets for?

But if I came on with the banjo, it sort of suspended their reaction for a little bit. They weren't sure what to make of me. And so I got used to using it as a crutch particularly in kind of, you know, rural gigs and stuff where you're kind of fighting this accent and the fact that you're a girl and I was young when I was starting out. So, yeah, I think it's kind of like my little safety blanket now. It's still my little teddy bear. I don't need it, but I like to have it in the show. Have you found that audiences don't react as well

ever since Scott Morrison cracked open the banjo? It's a ukulele. So that was a ukulele. And I take that deeply personally, the confusion between a ukuley. What's the difference between a banjo and a ukulele? Well, you can't just pick up a banjo and play it pretty immediately. It's a hard, it's a hard fucking instrument. Oh, yeah, because they've got like six strings or something.

Yeah, a banjo is bigger. It has the round body. It's got about cussive elements as well. A ukulele looks like a tiny little bad guitar. Yes. It's funny, I think it's funny you say that like the banjo became kind of like a blankie for you. Because I feel very similarly because the skill that I have that I've always had before comedy was piano. And so I feel really comfortable sitting down.

and talking and what I what I didn't expect to shock me so much is in my show the parts of it that are not presented from behind a piano standing up all of a sudden I don't I it's like a switch like I got immediately way more nervous having to stand and deliver stuff like I found that I was walking nervously and I found I couldn't plant my feet or grand my like and the moment I'm out of piano it's like yeah the the the banjo body that round body covers your belly and it feels very safe to hide behind it's yeah it's a very real real a real problem that I've got at the moment that I like stand with your feet slightly further apart than you would think it makes it harder for you to move yeah and you feel more grounded seriously like

stand with your feet further than your shoulders apart wow um and also it also comes across to some more powerful stance yeah try it yeah I will I love this wow I'm learning heaps I think I'm actually learning how to be a comedian like a bit after the fact now but I'm glad you should put your piano legs. They cannot move. They are stuck where they are. If I move them, the thing will break. This is going to be great.

I'm going to come down to Melbourne. I'm going to watch your show. And I encourage all the listeners to buy tickets to Alice's shows. And if you can't. I feel like I saw one of your first ever stand-up gigs, Alice. Back in like, it must have been 2012, 2013. When I was just starting out. Yeah.

That was, yeah. When I was starting out, I quit being a lawyer. Yes. I was trying to figure things out. I did a bit of work for you, an ill-fated little project, like, deeply toxic dynamic. Yeah, yeah, yep, I remember that. It was fun. It was like, I learned so much from that, which is just like, I think...

Don't get involved in deeply toxic projects. No, well, I, no, it was a gang of people who'd never worked together before. Yes. And it was actually like, that was this, like, really freeing thing. But there was, yeah, there got to be these tensions. And I ended up being the person who was like... trying to solve everyone else's tensions, which is kind of my role, but it meant that I didn't get any work done.

And I was just like, it's not my problem. What I should have done is been like, it's not my problem. I'm just going to write some comedy. But as it was, I felt like, oh, no, this person's got sad feelings and this person's angry and this person hates this person for no good reason. And I need to fix it because that's my job. But it wasn't my job. No.

But I found it really like, yeah, really educational. It was amazing because it ended up, I think there are about five people in the office and there were literally six factions. It was amazing. Yeah. What did that happen? Astonishing. Astonishing.

Like, who's the other faction? I don't even know. And I still like everyone who was involved in that. Yes, yes. But I hated them together. Oh, together they were terrible. Yes. Oh.

It's amazing. I can't wait. Yeah. Such a beautiful idea. Yeah, yeah. So the show is called Kronos. It's, is that how it's called Kronos? Kronos or Kronos?

C-H-R-O-N-O-S. However you want to pronounce it is correct. The Greeks are all dead. Not the real Greeks, not the modern Greeks, the ancient Greeks. The Greeks are all dead. So you can actually just look it up on more talent.com.com. You can. Or just Google Alice Fraser, I'm sure it'll come up.

Melbourne 31st of March, that's this Thursday, all the way through the 24th of April, the Melbourne Comedy Festival. Then in Sydney in early May, 50th of the 8th of May. Perth on the 13th and 14th of May. And then all the way to Edinburgh. in early August. Yeah. Yep.

And if you can't... That's so professional, Charles Firth. Like, like, that's knowing my date's better than I do. Well done. We do have them written down on a piece of paper. I mean, yes. But that's better than I've done. You know, I haven't written mine down on a piece of paper.

So you're next level. And if you can't catch Alice's shows for whatever reason, I don't care what it is. But you should definitely catch up with her shows on Amazon Prime and on ABC. And also, you're on the bugle all the time. Yeah. I am on the bugle and I write for the news quiz on BBC radio, whatever it is.

Can I ask? Because I'm a bit confused. I thought you'd moved to England. But you're in Australia. So what's going on? So on March the 7th, 2020, I did my preview for Kronos. And then two days later, I flew home to Sydney to do the six-week run of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Sydney Comedy Festival, which was what I'm doing this year now.

And then at the end of that six weeks, I realized I was not going to get back to London. Yes, you never. allow you, it is illegal. All of my stuff is still in storage there. Fuck. I had comedian friends pack it up, so it's probably all. Yes. It'll be very funnily packed up, though.

Yeah, it'll be covered in jam or it all be upside down. Like, I just, I've let go of that stuff in my, like, I've used my Buddhist upbringing to like release that stuff into the world if it exists. You accidentally Marie Kondo your own stuff. That's so, wow. That's fucked. So, like, do you have, are you going to go back? Yeah.

Well, I am going to. back to do my tour. I'm going to be in June July, I'm going to be a now boat in London because my daughter's godfather has a canal boat. He's willing to lend us. What?

And then I'll be in June July, I'll get my stuff back and decide whether it's been ruined or not. Anything you leave for five minutes in London gets covered in mould. So I'm assuming it's just a pile of like sad mold by now. We'll find out.

You might have discovered a new cheese. I may discover a new cheese or a cure for something. Yes. I hope it, you'll have it in your storage. Or I will be the next wet market. We'll find out. Alice Fraser, a pleasure to talk to you.

And despite what you say, I think your life sounds anything but boring. Oh, no, no, no. I am the boring centre of a very exciting life. Our gears from road microphones and we are part of the ACAST Creator Network. See you tomorrow.