I now wear gloves when it’s not cold enough to warrant wearing gloves because I have a thing called Raynaud’s Disease/Phenomenon/Syndrome. I had never heard of it, and not many other people have. This show is just an opportunity to explain what Raynaud’s is to as many people at once, because doing it individually is a pain.
Also, I’ll talk about other things I’ve had going on in the last year. Might yell a bit, in a passionate way, could you imagine me being aggressive?
Seen on the 2023 Melbourne Comedy Festival Gala, Thank God You’re here and Have You Been Paying Attention?
Winner – Melbourne Comedy Festival Award 2021
Winner – Piece of Wood Award, Melbourne Comedy Festival 2019
“Cements her as one of the festival’s feel-good champions.” – The Saturday Paper, 2023
The Playhouse
Canberra Theatre Centre
Civic Square, London Cct, Canberra ACT 2601
Thursday 21 March 2024
Sow starts at 6:30pm
Duration – 60 mins
How flatmate Celia Pacquola’s star rise inspired Geraldine Hickey
Geraldine Hickey is the epitome of an overnight success story. That is, if you subscribe to the old showbiz adage that an overnight success only takes 10 to 15 years. In her case, it took exactly two decades for her to be awarded the Most Outstanding Show at last year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
In 2001, she entered RAW Comedy and finished as a runner-up in the national final, which history shows serves as something of a microcosm for her career. Getting so far was proof of her innate comedic talent, but finishing runner-up was a frustration she would endure for many years.
Hickey, one of six children, was born in Albury to a truck-driving dad and a mum who mainly looked after the brood. “I was pretty happy, but bored. There wasn’t much to do. My entertainment was riding my bike to Big W and looking around,” she recalls, now many kilometres from the border town, as she sits on the verandah of the home she shares with partner Cath Bateman in Venus Bay, famous among her fans for its “lesbian pit” and absence of agapanthus.
She was in grade 3 when she announced that she was going to be a famous actor. “Is that right?” her mother responded, pointing to a classified ad in the local rag that she’d been reading. “Well, we’d better enrol you into this ...”
“And so every Saturday afternoon, I would go to Val Edmonds Children’s Theatre,” continues Hickey. The classes, which she took throughout primary and high school, provided escape, community and the discovery she could make people laugh.
The turning point came when she was attempting a serious theatrical moment in year 11 drama class and everybody laughed. “My teacher said, ‘Gezzy, do you know what this means?’ — Read the full interview 'The Age'
Hickey is a Master ★★★★ Time Out ★★★★★ The Age
See more great comedies at this year's Canberra Comedy Festival.
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