Second Coming

Urzila Carlson, who has won the New Zealand Comedy Guild 'Best Female Comedian' award three years running, originally moved to NZ in 2006 to take up a job as a graphic designer. Two years later she found herself (quite reluctantly) on stage at an Auckland comedy club in front of 70 co-workers unwittingly having been entered into a comedy competition by her then boss. Performing her set so as to not “look like a dick” in front of her co-workers, the next day she received a phone call from the club manager informing her that she had made it to the next round of the competition, to which she replied, “I don't know what you are talking about, I'm not interested.” After some encouragement from the manager however, she agreed to return but refused to let any of her co-workers know, convinced “the only reason that the audience laughed is because I knew all of them.” However, the audience kept on laughing, and a year-and-a-half later she was given an ultimatum by her boss: comedy or the job. Five years down the track and Carlson has her debut solo act in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, titled, I'm Going To Need A Second Opinion.

Carlson's show is about, “something that happened to me when I was 20 years old, about a second opinion that saved my life,” she says. Carlson will explore the concept of second opinions “when you get them, who gives them, when you need them and when you don't, because 99 per cent of the time no one needs them, nobody ever asks for it – people just offer them up.”

When asked how she feels about Melbourne she tells Inpress that she particularly likes the people-watching opportunities that Melbourne trams provide, sharing that “I could sit on the tram all day. There is always one guy who talks real loud on his phone, one baby screaming its head off, one person with everything in their house, and you have to wonder, 'Where the fuck are you going?'”

She also appreciates the opportunity to meet Australians in Australia, as opposed to the ocker incarnations that tend to frequent the UK or NZ. Indeed, she has a unique insight developed through growing up in South Africa, living in New Zealand and visiting Australia. She observes that the three countries are like cousins, always comparing the other two while maintaining that they are actually the best but quick to reach a quick compromise of everyone being winners when put in a room together.

Carlson, originally from Benoni in the province Gauteng, says that it was wonderful to grow up in South Africa. She shares that, “I'm lucky in a sense because 1994 (the year of the first elections and end of Apartheid) was my last year of high school.” She says that was inspiring to be a part of the movement that “changed the face of the country forever” and proud of her efforts taking part in and organising rallies with her school mates.

And as to her one piece of advice to aspiring young comics? “Talk about what you know, because if it's funny to you, it will be funny to other people.”