Comedy / chuckle busters
“The show is about society’s attitudes towards promiscuous women”
Chuckle Busters welcomes the multi-award-winning comic Harriet Kemsley this month: and she’s on a mission to shame slut shaming. In a Cornell University study women rated fictional female peer, Joan, as emotionally unstable and less competent because she was sexually promiscuous.
If Joan wasn’t fictional, her name would be Harriet Kemsley and, in this deeply personal show, Harriet delves into her sexual history.
Star of Bobby and Harriet Get Married, 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, Comedy Central’s Roast Battle and Live at The Comedy Store.
is needed now More than ever
Tell us as much you feel like revealing, about your own life experiences that have fed into this show.
Slutty Joan is about all the dumb things I did trying to get sex. It’s also about the attitudes we have towards promiscuous women. I delve into my sexual history in it, probably too much!
What are your hopes for the show – how much do you want to make audiences laugh, and how much do you want to make a) women and b) men, or just c) all of us come away thinking?
I want to make everybody laugh a lot! There might be a little message in there. But laughing is definitely the priority.
Harriet Kemsley delves into her own sexual history and calls out slut shaming in ‘Slutty Joan’
Do you hope Slutty Joan and all its content might seem irrelevant in a few years because we’ll have moved on and some of the attitudes you describe will seem dated? How likely is that, do you think?
Oh I hope so, that would be the dream. I don’t know how likely it is, but I feel like we can do it! I think a lot of us have got a ‘fuck you’ attitude at the moment which is great.
You warn audiences when the show is about to get a bit darker. How much light and dark does the show balance?
I like a dark edge, but I’m just saying what I feel and talking about things that I think are important. But that might make some people uncomfortable so I try to make them feel it’s OK. But it’s also pretty dumb at times, it is almost impossible to take myself seriously because every time I do I’ll do something stupid. I once accidentally did a whole show to an air conditioning unit.
Harriet Kemsley performs Slutty Joan at the Wardrobe Theatre on March 24. For more info and to book tickets, visit thewardrobetheatre.com/livetheatre/harriet-kemsley
Read more: Kieran Hodgson (March 9, 1532 Performing Arts Centre) on our troubled history with Europe
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