A Matter Of..

Bobby Macumber is a natural, both on the stage and in the classroom. “In high school, I used the classroom as my stage and the students as my audience, and the teacher was just the heckler who kept interrupting my show,” she recalls. Today, she's still doing great work in the classroom as a teacher, while moonlighting as a comedian. Her teaching experiences have inspired her new show Miss Interpret, which will debut at the 2012 Melbourne Fringe Festival.

While she's not, strictly speaking, accredited as a teacher, Macumber's work as a cricket coach has seen her working at primary schools with children all over the world. For the last ten years, she's worked at several Melbourne schools and done various international stints, ranging from Fiji to Samoa to Japan.

Naturally, she's encountered some interesting children in her travels, and it's these interactions that led her to write Miss Interpret. “I'm kind of just talking about all of the funny experiences that I've had with kids, because they're just so honest and raw and hilarious, really,” she explains. “I've been told a lot of things, things that adults have probably thought but haven't said to my face, so I have a bit of a joke about that.”

Children, Macumber explains, aren't afraid to speak their minds. “Kids have told me that my bum's getting bigger, that I've got stuff in my teeth that's been there all day, little things like that. When I was in Samoa, I had a boy come up to me and ask in front of the class, why do I have whiskers, because I'm not a man? It was a little bit embarrassing, but that's just kids for you.”

Macumber saw these sorts of interactions as part of her job, but when she shared the stories, the reactions convinced her that she might be mining comedy gold. “It's kind of shocking to hear so many honest truths from the kids, but when I was telling my housemates and family the stories, they were just cracking up,” she explains.

Since then, she's turned her attentions to getting Miss Interpret ready for the Fringe stage. Macumber understands the value of preparation, and she's been testing the material around the comedy traps for the last few weeks. “There's no better rehearsal than going out and doing [new material] to a crowd,” she explains. “A lot of the stuff that I think it funny might not get perceived as well as I think it is.”

Unlike some performers who don't put in the effort and preparation, instead hoping to wing it, Macumber thinks her performances through. Even before she stepped up on stage as a comedian, she did her research by checking out comedy clubs and clocking the standard. She had no great aspirations at first. “I thought I'd give it a go,” she says. “[It] went all right the first couple of times, so I've stuck with it.” Now, however, comedy has evolved into a bona fide passion for Macumber, and she hopes to be performing at many Fringe Festivals to come. “I love to make people laugh,” she says happily.