Comedian Mandy Nolan won’t need any help navigating around the city when she visits Bathurst this month.
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Her husband – before she met him – was a lecturer in nursing at the local Charles Sturt University campus and some of his best friends still live in Bathurst, so it won’t be her first trip.
“It's a good, fun community - regional as well as cosmopolitan,” she says.
Nolan and fellow comedian Ellen Briggs – self-described middle-aged mothers and wives – are on the road with Women Like Us, in which they promise to milk all the sacred cows, and will be appearing at both Bathurst and Orange.
Nolan said regional audiences react well to their comedy because the pair are from regional areas themselves.
“Sometimes you go to see comedy and it's young, urban males,” she said.
“The jokes are funny, but it's not telling their [regional audiences’] stories.”
Women Like Us – two hours of solo stand up – covers topics including the beauty industry, getting older, getting fatter, strange surgeries, weird television shows, obsessions, frustrations, and who unpacks the dishwasher.
Nolan, a published author who has appeared on the ABC’s Q and A and SBS’s Insight, has been on the comedy scene for 30 years.
Briggs is a RAW Comedy national finalist and won Foxtel Comedy Channel’s How To Be A Comedian.
“People come to the show, have a laugh, and feel really great about everything that's wrong with them because we're worse,” Nolan said.
And the show is not just for women, according to Nolan, who said “men are into it too”.
The comedians have seven children between them.
“It’s not as easy for us to tour as it is for male comedians,” Briggs said. “Men on the circuit can up and leave for weeks at a time, but as busy hands-on mothers, Mandy and I really have a lot of juggling to do to manage our careers.”
People come to the show, have a laugh, and feel really great.
- Mandy Nolan
Women Like Us will be at the Orange City Bowling Club on Thursday, September 15 and at Bathurst Panthers on Friday, September 16.
Book tickets for the Orange show at http://www.ocbc.org.au/ or call the club on 6362 2533.
Book tickets for the Bathurst show at www.bathurst.panthers.com.au or call the club on 6330 0600.
Alternatively, visit womenlikeus.com.au
