Comic phenom Josh Glanc embarks on a glorious homecoming to Australia from the land of Shakespeare, bringing his best-of show ‘Collections’ to Fringe World in Perth.
“I’m feeling excited,” Josh says of his impending Fringe run.
“I love performing in Perth, it’s one of my favourite cities in Australia to perform. You want to get the love from the home audience, it’s a nice thing to get and I do have some really great audience support back home. So, I’m excited to show them my stuff.”
Josh is now based in the UK, living and working in London where he has been delivering his signature offbeat brand of humour to throngs of comedy-loving Brits, selling out esteemed venues like the Soho Theatre night after night.
“I’ve done so much performing already,” Josh says.
“I came over, I did Edinburgh [Festival Fringe], which was amazing. I’ve been doing a lot of theatre stuff – I did a theatre show at this festival in Leeds, I then did my Soho Theatre show. There are tonnes of opportunity to constantly do theatre.”
He returns to Australia with ‘Collections’, a retrospective comprising Josh’s best bits and characters from over the years.
“‘Collections’ is kind of like a best-of,” he explains.
“I did a bit of it here in the UK and it was just great doing stuff I haven’t done for a few years that I was able to bring a new way of doing it for people that haven’t seen me do it for a long time. It’s really great to be doing that show and I’m excited.”
Josh says that he has been careful with how he has curated ‘Collections’ so that the show feels cohesive for audiences.
“It’s not like I’ve gone: ‘what are my best bits? My best bits are one, two, three, four, five’ and those are in the show,” he says.
“Because those bits may not work all that well together. So, I’ve curated it in a way that it cohesively works as a show and it’s the bits I think audiences really love and ones I really enjoy doing.
“I do a bit where I play the lead singer [René Dif] from Aqua and do a whole routine about Aqua, and over the years people have just loved that. Or there was a cyclist character I did, and I didn’t do him too often, but people have always said, ‘mate, I love that cyclist bit’. It’s bits that I think are my strongest but also bits that work for the show.”
Josh’s experiences in the UK have seen him take that prized vital step from emerging artist to established performer.
“It’s a very supportive industry so I take a lot of risks here [in the UK], so I think my comedy gets better and better over here because I’m willing to try different things,” he says.
“You’ve got to risk failing in order to get better and I feel quite safe to do that over here, so I think the people will probably see a more confident and risk-taking performer. Every year you want to get better and more confident, and you want to be able to hone in on what your voice is and how you want to do your comedy.”
Josh Glanc plays The Parlour at The Pleasure Garden (Fringe World Perth) 19-28 January.
