Gen Fricker Reveals Comedy Festival Nightmare
"Being a comedian is awesome but showbiz sucks!"
Gen Fricker (Source: Facebook)
Australian stand-up comedian, writer, actor, and radio presenter Gen Fricker has revealed a nightmare scenario on social media. She detailed how, months out from her first comedy tour in years, she had to organise the tour on her own.
Taking to Meta’s latest social media platform, Threads, on Sunday (24 March), Fricker recalled building her first East Coast tour in a few years back in October. “And then in December, I found out no work had been done except for paying the rego for MICF (my money),” she wrote.
By that point, applications to perform at most comedy festivals in 2024 had closed, “meaning most of the dates/cities I wanted to do hadn’t been booked despite being told they would. I personally had to beg programmers for stage time,” Fricker explained.
Fricker added that this team worked with her for over ten years, and the way things played out “had a huge impact” on her mental health and livelihood. Since December, Fricker has been forced to teach herself “to be a producer as well as craft and market a show that I’m proud of.”
Fricker called the experience a “steep learning curve”, but the resulting show, Forever, is one that she’s incredibly proud of. She continued, “I genuinely think it’s probably one of the best things I’ve done.
“I feel proud that my hand is in all of it, and that I’ve gotten to this point at all. Come if you want, it’s good and funny”. She ended the thread by noting that “being a comedian is awesome but showbiz sucks!” and if she could do “literally anything else”, she would.
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Gen Fricker’s new show, Forever, opens at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival this Thursday, 28 March, and runs until Sunday, 7 April.
Forever is described as a humorous take on existential thoughts, with Fricker set to ponder: “How do you make a mark on this world? What makes a Great Man great? And does any of it really matter?”
You can buy tickets via the MICF website.
The Music last interviewed Fricker in 2016, when the comedy star told Dan Cribb about her feelings of “imposter syndrome.”
“My main thing is having to stop myself from completely throwing out things or getting dark on stuff because that’s just how I’m geared; I’m very self-critical,” Fricker said. “Being a woman in the industry, you’re kind of already going in where everyone is going to criticise you more because you’re kind of the novelty, I guess.”
However, she did note that she witnessed the comedy scene “getting better” regarding equality.
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