How do you perform an hour of stand-up comedy centred around the theme of rape and sexual assault?
Ideally, you'd need the right mixture of intelligence, social observation, timing and complete boldness to test every thought and idea of your audience, which is exactly what Adrienne Truscott accomplishes with Adrienne Truscott's Asking For It.
The show begins at full-throttle and doesn't back down, with Truscott emerging and performing semi-naked while playing off as a stereotypical ditzy bar girl. From there she squeezes the audience with incredibly sharp observational humour that somehow straddles a line between hard-hitting and confrontational fact, social commentary and ridiculously hysterical comedy. Each joke rides a distinct wave throughout the audience as the side-splitting humour washes with the tension of the reality.
Utilising projections of artists and photographs of comedic peers, Truscott's use of the faux-naive character manages to do something that very few artists would be capable of as she creates an empowering message by hilariously tearing down the patriarchal walls around it.
