Some people take drugs or alcohol to give them a high; I go and see stand-up comedy. Everything that I am today and everything that is dear to me can be linked to the art of stand-up comedy. If it wasn’t for Australian comedian, Adam Hills, I wouldn’t have accepted my disability, I wouldn’t have become as confident and most importantly I wouldn’t have my best friend.
Comedy has given me the tools to be able to stand up for what I believe in and rethink a lot of my assumptions about the world. Without comedy, I may still have the misconceptions about many things including Muslims, gays and burlesque. I wouldn’t have broadened my horizons, to be more accepting than I was before.
The one thing I collect comedy for is: friendship. The Melbourne International Comedy Festival was the first place I felt like I was a part of a community. Because of my limited abilities and ‘skewed look on the world’ I always felt like I was searching for a group of people that accepted me for looking at the world in a different way because they did too. I learnt soon that comedy comes in all shapes and sizes, and also that each comedian has their own gripe in the world that they use comedy as a coping mechanism. I was taken under the wing of Tim Ferguson and encouraged that I could do comedy and that because ‘I have a goldmine of material, I would be doing the industry a great disservice if I didn’t at least give it a try.’
Through comedy, I have collected and found many great ideas and simple exclamations for the simplest things in life. Through comedy, I have found friends, and had many great experiences but most of all through comedy I accepted myself.
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