Comedy Festival Acts Offer Ticket Discount For Intl Women's Day To Highlight Wage Gap

More than 10 acts at this year's Adelaide Fringe festival are offering a discounted ticket rate for performances today in honour of International Women's Day and to highlight the enduring wage gap still faced by women in the workforce.

And four acts at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, including three taking part in the initiative in Adelaide, will also be offering the discount for tickets to any of their upcoming performances at that event, as long as they are booked between now and 10am tomorrow, Thursday 9 March.

Fourteen different shows all up between the two festivals will be available at a price reduced by 16.2%, the national wage gap rate, to draw attention to persistent workplace inequality in Australia. To access the discount, punters must use the codeword "stepitup" when making their booking.

Participating shows include The Un-pinchable Pink Pen by Yianni Agisilaou, Tessa Waters' Fully Sik and Frehd The Clowne's Stripped Bare in both Adelaide and Melbourne; in Melbourne, they'll be joined by Fringe Wives Club's Glittery Clittery — A ConSENSUAL Party; and, in Adelaide only, Adrienne Truscott's Asking For It, James Noksie's Australia, Let's Talk About The Golliwogs, Becky Lou's Real Woman, cabaret spectacular Seen & Heard, comedy murder-mystery Butt Kapinski, the physical theatre of Elixir, Shirley Gnome's Taking It Up A Notch, The Kagools' Tutti, Charlie Caper & Malin Nilsson's Minor Miracles and The Desperettes' A Guide To Being A Wingman.

While the discount is technically available to people of all genders, Agisilaou — who instigated the initiative — and Waters kindly suggest that maybe men can still find it in their hearts to pay full price, since they're not the ones routinely being exposed to inequality in their daily life or being paid less for the same amount of work that their counterparts are putting in. Which, you know... fair enough.

You can see videos about the discount offer for both Adelaide and Melbourne below, or find out more information at the Adelaide Fringe and Melbourne International Comedy Festival's websites.