Comedian Alex Ward returns to her home town to resume her role as ambassador for the Brisbane Comedy Festival, where she’ll perform her debut, solo show, ‘Quiet’.
Born in Brisbane and currently based in Melbourne, Alex has been ambassador for the festival for the past two years and takes pride in highlighting local, home-grown talent. “This year we've got for the first time a variety line-up called ‘Queensland Born And Bread’, Alex says.
“Last year we had ‘Brisbane Born And Bread’, but this year they've made it a bit more of a widespread thing and called it ‘Queensland Born And Bread'. We bring up acts that have moved out from Queensland and are maybe a year off from doing their own solo shows, and they're all going to share the stage.
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“Other than that we actually have a lot of acts doing their first solo shows as well: Angus Gordon (RAW Comedy 2015 winner), Cameron James is a great comedian from Sydney, and just to slip it in there, myself as well: self-promotion is everything,” she adds with a laugh.
Speaking of self-promotion, Alex is delighted that this year at the Brisbane Comedy Festival she will be presenting her very first solo, stand-up show, ‘Quiet’.
Alex launched the show with a premiere at Perth Fringe World in January. “It went well,” she says.
"My debut day in Perth, [I’ve] literally never been to Perth and the first show went really well; I only had to refer to my notes twice, which is not too bad at all.
"I also had a couple people hanging around after the show to have a chat and they really liked it, so I’m really excited to go home and do it, back to Brisbane where I started doing comedy. That's really my highlight for the year.”
Alex spent the formative years of her career building her comedy chops on the local Brisbane scene and was a finalist in Queensland RAW Comedy in both 2014 and 2015.
As her first solo performance, Alex wanted ‘Quiet’ to be a “classic, here-I-am show” that gives audiences some personal insight into who she is as a person. “The show is just basically going through why I went to Melbourne, because I do love living in Brisbane.
"But I explain why I made the change, as well as growing up with my family and also talking about being quiet. It comes in broadly, but I talk about the few times in my life I might have been a little bit quiet, because as a kid I didn't really shut up.
“Then there are the reasons behind that, the reason I even do stand-up, but basically it's just all my favourite and funniest jokes that I’ve written over the past couple of years.
“I’ve always written about my own life experiences generally anyway, so it wasn't too hard for me to tie it together and tell the story I’ve been planning to tell for a few years now.”
Alex Ward Shows
7-12 Mar - Brisbane Comedy Festival30 Mar-23 Apr - Melbourne International Comedy Festival
