Hannah Gadsby Australian Comedian From Smithton

Early life

Hannah Gadsby is an Australian comedian, writer and actor, born on 12 January 1978. Gadsby grew up in Smithton, a small town on the remote north-west coast of Tasmania, as the youngest of five children, and attended Smithton High School from 1990 to 1995.

Gadsby began university studies at the University of Tasmania in Hobart and later moved to the Australian National University, where a bachelor's degree in art history and curatorship was completed in 2003. Before comedy became a career, Gadsby held a run of varied jobs: working in bookshops in Canberra, running the projector at an outdoor cinema in Darwin, and spending two years picking vegetables and planting trees along the east coast of Australia. The art-history training would later shape a good deal of the work.

Career

Gadsby's stand-up career began in 2006, when a visit to a sister in Adelaide led to an entry in the Raw Comedy competition for new performers. Gadsby progressed through the heats and won the national final, which earned a place in the So You Think You're Funny? contest at the Edinburgh Fringe, where the result was second prize. The first solo show, Hannah Gadsby is Wrong and Broken, won a best newcomer award in 2007 and toured to Edinburgh and New York. In 2008 Gadsby performed Meat the Musical with Amelia Jane Hunter at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, and a long run of annual touring shows followed, among them The Cliff Young Shuffle, Mrs Chuckles, Dogmatic and Donkey.

Alongside stand-up, Gadsby built a parallel line of work around art. From 2009 to 2013 Gadsby presented comedy art tours with the National Gallery of Victoria, and wrote and presented two documentary specials for ABC television's Artscape series, Hannah Gadsby Goes Domestic in 2010 and The NGV Story in 2011. In 2015 a BBC Radio 4 series, Hannah Gadsby: Arts Clown, drew on the same material.

On television, Gadsby co-wrote and co-starred in the ABC series Adam Hills Tonight across three seasons from 2011 to 2013, co-wrote and presented the three-part documentary series Hannah Gadsby's Oz in 2014, and co-wrote 20 episodes of Please Like Me with Josh Thomas between 2013 and 2016, also playing a fictional version of Hannah in that show. Gadsby later joined the cast of the fourth season of Netflix's Sex Education as Celia, a radio host.

The show Nanette, built partly as a response to the public debate in Australia before same-sex marriage became law, brought Gadsby international attention. Netflix released a filmed version in 2018. A follow-up, Douglas, previewed in Adelaide in March 2019 before touring the United States and Australia, and reached Netflix in 2020. The tour Body of Work began in July 2021 and became the Netflix special Something Special, released on 10 May 2023. In September 2022 Gadsby signed a multi-title agreement with Netflix, and in March 2024 the platform streamed Hannah Gadsby's Gender Agenda, a comedy special featuring seven genderqueer comedians.

Gadsby's memoir, Ten Steps to Nanette: A Memoir Situation, was published in March 2022. It became a New York Times bestseller and has been published in more than ten languages. Gadsby narrated the audiobook, which won an Earphones Award and was a finalist for the Audie Award for narration by the author. In mid-2023 Gadsby curated an exhibition on Picasso at the Brooklyn Museum, which received largely negative notices from art critics.

Recognition

For Nanette, Gadsby received the Helpmann Award for best comedy performer in 2017, the Barry Award at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, and a joint Edinburgh Festival Fringe Comedy Award. The special later brought a Peabody Award and a Primetime Emmy Award for writing for a variety special. Gadsby took the Helpmann Award again in 2019 for Douglas, which was nominated for an Emmy in the same writing category the following year. In 2021 the University of Tasmania awarded Gadsby an honorary Doctor of Literature degree, citing a role as an ambassador for LGBTIQ+ people worldwide.

Personal life

In January 2021 Gadsby married the producer Jenney Shamash. Gadsby has supported several charities, including Big Brothers Big Sisters of Melbourne, Edmund Rice Camps of Victoria and the Sacred Heart Mission.