Over the phone, a child is singing a song of their own creation.
“I’m so sorry to have added these creative limitations to this,” Josie Long apologises with a yawn. “I can definitely talk if you don’t mind that it might be a bit chaotic.”
It’s understandable why English comedian Josie Long is tired; the combination of jetlag and two young children in a foreign country is enough to exhaust anyone. Despite her tiredness, her joy has not diminished in the six years since her last visit to Australia. Along with taking their first big trip overseas as a family, Josie makes her long-awaited return to tour her latest show, ‘Re-Enchantment’.
A lot has changed in Josie’s life since her last visit to Australia. First, she gave birth to a daughter in 2018 (now singing over the phone). Initially hoping to return to Australia in 2020, the entire world was forced to isolate due to the COVID pandemic. Instead, Josie, her partner and daughter moved to Glasgow, Scotland, and in 2021 she gave birth to another daughter – a positive that came from a negative, as she retells in her new show.
“[‘Re-Enchantment’ is] about trying to rebuild and fall in love with the world again after the difficulties of things like the pandemic and despite how difficult things have been,” she says. “It’s about finding a bit of joy and excitement and community and things like that. It’s also about a bunch of silly stuff, too. There are a lot of silly voices, really.”
Josie has long been known for her incredible sense of optimism – having to take two young children on a long flight from the UK to Australia, she shrugs, ‘It’s just one really bad day’. However, the last few years have been filled with enough doom to disenchant the most hopeful, including Brexit, the Russian invasion, and the rise of the far-right. It was while reading ‘Experiments In Imagining Otherwise’ by British author Lola Olufemi that Josie was struck by a particular sentence: ‘After defeat, re-enchantment is necessary’.
“It’s such a beautiful, profound, defiant, and imaginative book,” she says. “That quote about re-enchantment, having felt defeated politically many times and feeling very defeated for a number of reasons, the idea that it’s possible to fall back in love with the world is inspiring.”
Another topic Josie covers in ‘Re-Enchantment’ is when both herself and her partner were diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and the relief the diagnosis has given her. “Before the pandemic, the things I did, like exercising lots, gigging lots, travelling lots, all of these things gave me the right amount of stimulation to keep me afloat,” she says. “Once lockdown happened and all those things were gone, I just found that I had zero executive function – I could not manage anything. When I was trying to write and trying to work, it was impossible. That’s when I saw friends of mine who were finding out the same thing. Someone said they were sure that I had it, and every single symptom I’ve had and I agreed with it.”
“It’s so funny because I thought it was a completely unique experience for me. But when I got to Edinburgh and Melbourne it was like, ‘No, every comedian has ADHD. Every single one of them’. There’s no neurotypical comedian, basically,” she laughs.
After having to wait long enough, Josie’s daughter is demanding playtime. Thankfully, returning to Australia has given her the energy to perform and play.
“I think both of my children are very Vitamin D deficient because they’ve come here and they’ve both just shot up and have so much energy,” she says. “Even me! I realised the weather [in Glasgow] was definitely making me feel listless and like I had no energy. I just suddenly feel a lot more energised.”
Josie Long plays The Factory Theatre (Sydney Comedy Festival), 29-30 April and Planet Royale (Perth Comedy Festival) 4 May.
