AliceFraser posts
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New Teacast: Laura Davis
Laura is excellent, even if she does have a mystifying (to me) love of Russian Caravan tea. We have a chat about ethical bra dilemmas, moving house, mementos of meaningful existential moments, going overseas, and how to manage rage. Listen Here: http://apple.co/2oyL7VyIt was hard to get this podcast out this week - this was the second time we'd sat down for tea, but my SD card was full, and my spares had ended up in storage, so we had to sort out a time to do take 2. I left it late to record, because of the logistics of moving out of my pla...
Unhooked.
Today, I put all my stuff into storage except for one suitcase and my banjo. Tomorrow I'll take my keys back to the rental agents. It all feels quite strange, as moving always does. Dismantling a little exoskeleton of psychological comfort - the illusion of security, for the span of your lease.I put this bookshelf and lamp out to be picked up by some friends who wanted them. (I went to get breakfast and returned to find them gone, so unfortunately, my friends will not be able to have them. I assume anyone who made a lunge for them and manag...
New Teacast! John Vlismas
Businessman, comedian, artist, South African. I had a chat with the very very lovely John Vlismas in Perth last week, and here it is:http://apple.co/2oyL7VyWe talked about race, politics, and how things are much more complicated than we want them to be (WELCOME TO THE TEACAST THAT'S HOW WE ROLL).Here's an interesting article about John, if you want to find out more about his stuff: http://www.leader.co.za/article.aspx?s=41&f=1&a=5252You can find him on twitter at @fortyshort
New Teacast: Paul Solomon!
Podcast Link here: http://apple.co/2oyL7VyWhenever I come to Perth, I'll hit up Paulie Solomon. He is a childhood friend, and a fountain of joy.Ex-Radio jock and chef, we talk about the complexities of jealousy, Paul's capacity for sympathetic joy, the ups and downs of failed careers, fatness and associated tactics for society to process body positivity, how he feels about Masterchef and arranged marriages. I drink a green tea (bag tea, boo), he drinks a strawberry milkshake (sort of like a tea?).
Mother's Day
When I scrolled back through my pictures to find a photo to use for this post, it hurt to realise how far back I had to go. This is a photo of a nice moment - I thought at the time that it was a very good encapsulation of how my dad looked after mum. This was after her first round of chemo - before we knew that it hadn't worked and that nothing would. At Redleaf pool, which she loved. But scrolling back made me feel an unpleasant surge of distance - a feeling of time as space. Relentless. My mama is borne back in time by this ruthless forwa...
Update of Dad-night.
Dad came to my show last night. I was nervous about that. He said he liked it a lot except for the bits where I retch. I would do the show anyway, but it's nice to have his blessing. The audience was incredibly warm and kind and kept clapping til I got back on stage. So I made him stand up and get his share of clapping as the anti-hero/hero/inspiration for the story and its denouement. I shake people's hands as they leave my show (unless it was nightmarish, and then I hide backstage). A lot of people went out of their way to shake dad&#...
New Teacast: Professor Michael Fraser
This was an interesting podcast for me to do. I enjoy talking to dad about the things he's Professoring on, and I definitely haven't thought enough about privacy in the modern world, though I know that it's an obvious issue - it just doesn't seem like one with an easy solution.link here: http://apple.co/2hw3h6UI also asked dad how he felt about being used in my show, Empire, which was a tough box to open. Dad's opinion means a lot to me, and he has very strong ideas about right and wrong (as you can tell in the show). I also...
Race and I.Q
There's a bit of stuff going round in the discourse, particularly on the right/alt-right about IQ and race - it's seen as a failing of the left that left thinkers refuse to engage with the idea of IQ and race, or are disingenuous about the data which exists; finding flaws in the methodology of those who engage in such research, accusing the scientists of racism or eugenics bordering on nazism. The idea that there is a relation between IQ and race is seen as a dangerous idea, and because we've become more ideologically tribal in our ...
Teacast 146 Lisa Skye
The episode is up here!http://apple.co/2hw3h6UI had a fruit tea with Lisa Skye in my flat in Melbourne and we talked over fruit tea (Not camomile) about Lisa's approach to Fashion, synaesthesia, polyamory, artistic success, forward momentum, heartbreak and why Lisa's got three of the same male in different aspect ratios.I enjoyed the chat very much because Lisa and I have very different approaches to the world, but we get on very well - I enjoy negotiating with her through moral and ethical issues and we end up finding a lot of common g...
WARNING FOR PIC OF TERRIBLE WORDS: This Week's SBS Comedy Article.
This week's article for SBS Comedy involves a long long cane toad metaphor and the phrase "rage-boners". Consider yourselves warned:http://www.sbs.com.au/comedy/article/2017/04/28/humping-things-our-rage-boners-why-we-cant-have-nice-things---For context, I've been filling in for a friend on a TV show I usually just write jokes for. This involves filtering a heck of a lot of terrible people saying terrible things. It gets to me a bit - gives me the hunted feeling that awful people are everywhere, pouring the creative fire of thei...
MICF Wrap-up: Metrics free success, fun failure.
I've done solo shows at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival for a couple of years now, so it's worth a look back on this one and see what was different about it, and what was familiar.This is not the first festival I've really struggled with my show in the first week, but this year I didn't feel like I was polishing it as much as I was totally reassembling it night by night. I did manage not to read reviews this year though, which was good. This show was simultaneously my most 'standup-ey' and my most insidiously...
New Teacast: Andrew McClelland
itunes link here: http://apple.co/2oyL7VyI really like Andrew McClelland, he's joyous, articulate and ethical. We chatted over tea and an almond milk latte about the universal basic income, his revised attitude to his catholic confirmation name, Catholic comic books and the worth of a human being.I also make a little announcement at the beginning of the show.This was a relaxing and free flowing conversation. It's been a few hard weeks of comedy festival - more inconsistent for me than previous years both in terms of the quality of my sh...
Teacast! Jeeves Verma! Teacast!
I really enjoyed this chat with Jeeves.We sat outside in Melbourne at the QV building, drinking tea with bits in. The world of Emojis, the reality of the times when people don't laugh, how to change the past in a laboratory.Jeeves is one of those incredibly generous and open people - I really enjoy all the conversations I have with him, and was really pleased to have him on the pod.Listen here: http://apple.co/2hw3h6UJeeves Verma is available online if you google his name @jeevesverma
Tim Batt! New Teacast! Tim Batt
http://apple.co/2hw3h6UThis week's episode is with little emperor and worst idea of all time haver, Tim Batt. We talk of politics over toast and tea (he had a coffee) and try to solve the world.Have a listen.Axx
Avocado Ripeness and Reviews
I'm in writing jokes for The Project today, before my show tonight and there's some top notch office banter about avocado ripeness happening in the staff kitchen.I was filling my water bottle at the water cooler - revelling in having access to a water cooler after years of assiduously avoiding office life. Mid-bottle-fill, I tuned in to the chat of two excellently scruffed and coiffed production dudes making salad at the counter behind me and talking about their avocado buying tactics.Most of the time I work on my own, and have no oppor...
Some drunk idiot mate is far more of a risk to you than that grubby man who's shouting at bats.
This is the article I wrote for SBS Comedy this week in response to a thread in a group I'm in online about safety for women going home at night.During the comedy festival, everyone's internal clocks shift, after a few days of 'jet lag' type disorientation it's a totally reasonable thing for a comedian to consider coming home at around 2 or 3 every night a completely normal day-job type situation.If your show finishes at 10.30 (as mine does, this year), I'm not even undressed and packed down til 10.45 and the adrenaline ...
Feed Spam, Desperation and Attention
I think it's part of feeling a bit helpless - social media is an easy place to go to try to whip up friends to come and see your stuff. At this time of year - the festival season, every one of my colleagues is being told to plug their shows online.It's one of the pieces of advice every primer on self-publicising gives you - though many differ as to the best way to do it. Algorithms change - privileging pictures over links, certain hashtags, certain 'moods' and times of posting. So it's tempting to try to cover all the bases....
Mothers Day in The UK
UK mothers day. Seeing all my friends over there giving love and gratitude to their mamas. Thinking about mine.It's good sometimes to take a little while to be sad and think - sometimes it can feel dangerous to pull out memories and let myself feel the intensity of love that will inevitably slide towards a bottomless pit of sadness.As time passes, I have a better sense of where the edges are of that sadness, and don't have to be so careful of its gravitational pull; so worried that it'll suck me down into crippling mindless grief. T...
New Teacast: Karen Martin-Stone
Podcast HereThis was an episode about good and evil - things that we all think we know intuitively. Karen is an old friend, an Archaeologist, Documentarian, Writer and comedian, she's one of the busiest people I know.We talk about how good people can do bad things, and how we can like bad people. Then we talk about what's unforgivable and an unforgivable sequence of events.We talk about Australian Aboriginal manhood and she introduces me to the concept of the Long Grass.All in all this was a Teacast that stretched me. I enjoyed it, and ...
This week's Article for SBS Comedy
I wrote this article in response to a request (yes really) from a UK agent for me to contribute a written up version of some of my material on this subject to the discussion that's currently going on in The Guardian about Periods. It ended up being a bit too unfocused and not enough about periods, so I joked it up a bit and sent it to SBS Comedy. I think I'm at about 100 articles for them now, which is a great thing. Let me know if you ever want me to address a particular topic. No promises, but if it's something that strikes a chor...
Fantasy Novels and Escapism
This week's SBS Comedy article, in which I reveal slightly too much about my inner life. http://www.sbs.com.au/comedy/article/2017/03/17/four-fantasy-novel-archetypes-you-can-be-instead-yourself-when-life-gets-hardSome thoughts on the article: I always know when I'm stressed, because I find myself on my third novel of the day, some time past midnight debating "just one more chapter". That level of escapism is probably marginally better for my health than an outright heroin problem, but not really better for my productivity or ba...
New Teacast: Ross Everett
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/tea-with-alice/id789603540?mt=2This week's episode is with Ross Everett, who came out from L.A. to do his solo show at the Adelaide Fringe.We talked about his experiences with self help (both positive and negative), ideas about chivalry, masculinity, generosity, how to clean a dirty aura, and how you pronounce QQ when you're ordering bubble tea.
New Teacast: Dean Mayes
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/tea-with-alice/id789603540?mt=2This week's podcast is with Author and Night Nurse, Dean Mayes, who spoke to me on the podcast nearly a year ago (5 May 2016) the night before he was about to go in for an operation that might cut out his voice permanently.This catch-up pod was a fascinating look into the process of suddenly losing one of your taken-for-granted faculties, and the light that casts on the complexities of communicating.I also spoke with Dean about his time working in Neo-Natal Intensive Care, w...
New Poem up
New Poem up on the internet for those of you who like that sort of thing when I do it.http://lucidandalight.tumblr.com/post/158180284917/sometimes-i-find-im-lost-for-words-or-not-that
New Teacast - James Nokise
https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/tea-with-alice/id789603540?mt=2James is a friend of the Teacast, and we had a lovely long ranging chat in a teahouse in Adelaide about all sorts of things, from war to poetry (though not war poetry).James is available on twitter at @jamesnokise and you should hit him up for a great mix of thoughtful serious theatre stuff and comedy.
Interview - Groggy Fraser
If you want to hear me blither on morning radio about my show, here is an interview I did way too early for being coherent:
New Teacast: Gillian English
Rape and Football, aggression, storytelling and your responsibility to help other people.The podcast is up here: http://apple.co/2hw3h6UI really enjoyed talking with Gillian, and it made me think about my own reluctance to ... not think of myself as, but market myself as a feminist. I think that while my politics are towards the left, I try to avoid labels, almost compulsively.Maybe it's just my inherent reluctance to be in a gang, or maybe I feel like having a party can stand in the way of genuine conversation - there's a weight of ass...
Adelaide Fringe Underway
Oh man. It's brutal starting a new show. <br><br>You force yourself to step deliberately into the unknown, away from the smooth joy of surfing something you've worked on for a year - knowing the beats, tinkering with the emphasis on a punchline to squeeze the laugh response from the audience up a notch, letting a silence linger for a tension ratcheting second longer, safe in the knowledge that you're going to slam a punchline home. <br><br>Now I have to think about what I want to say; what I AM saying; how far the distance is betwee...
New Teacast up: Sangeetha Pillai on Refugee Law
The link is HEREI caught up with Constitutional and Refugee law academic Sangeetha Pillai to talk about fantasy, reality, empathy, hormones and the ethics of how we decide what's important to care about.I first met Sangeetha in year 7, when she was a sweet-voiced Tolkien fanatic and I was an awkward nerd. She remains one of the few people from school I like, and I was very pleased to catch up with her to talk about the really difficult things in life - how to decide what to care about, and using the framework of the law to shield yourself f...
New Teacast up with Suzi Ruffell!
The link is here.This was a lot of fun to do as a podcast. I really like talking to Suzi, and although I was slightly wary about talking shop, I think we touched on some really interesting subjects, including class, the status hierachies of comedy and the complexities of being a comic who isn't straight - how you play the line between just being yourself, and being open about your differences.We also talked about how to talk about the delicate issues in the context of comedy, how to make sure you're funny when you talk about hard things...
