Cal Wilson

When asked which profession besides comedy she'd be best at, seasoned comedian Cal Wilson humbly hesitates, “I don't think there's anything I could do… maybe a kindergarten teacher. You get to do craft – as I'm talking to you I'm surrounded by fake flowers and a glue gun.” It's from the comic potential of pseudo professions that Wilson has created her new show, It Could Have Been Me. A mix of stand-up and characters, including a dude and a poet, she describes the show as “the people I could have been if I'd made different decisions.”

A career in comedy wasn't always where Wilson had pictured herself. “When I was a kid I remember seeing some stand-up comedy and thinking, 'I would love to do that but I'm not funny'. Then I wanted to be an actress and then I started doing theatre sports in high school. We ended up starting our own professional company in Christchurch and that's still going 20-something years later. I just sort of fell into stand-up – I didn't know that that's where I was going to end up, but in the last few years I've kind of gone, 'Oh well, I guess I'm a comedian'.” 

Despite the uncertainty, it's clear comedy is her passion. The performer enthusiastically explains how “the gratuitous reward of standing on stage and telling a joke and having that immediate reward back from the audience is like when you're at a party in the funny corner, everyone is telling stories and roaring with laughter. Being on stage feels like that but magnified – you're in the best corner of the party. I think for some reason people will take a lot more from a character than they will from just a straight stand-up comedian.”

In the new show, Wilson's male character “cracks onto the women in the audience”. “Female comedians don't get groupies the way that male comedians do,” she jokes, adding that perhaps this is her “one chance to try and score a member of the audience”.

“I reckon if I was a guy I'd be taller. I reckon I'd have a really nice day reaching all of the things I have to get a step ladder for.”