By Rod Yates
When British stand-up comedian Jen Brister brings her latest show, Reactive, to Australia, she will perform in almost entirely sold-out rooms.
Rewind to 1998, and the scenario was a little different.
British comedian Jen Brister had a hard slog to find success but persevered.
Brister was living in the Melbourne beachside suburb of St Kilda and would spend her Sunday evenings at the Hotel Esplanade, performing five-to-seven-minute sets at the weekly comedy night. They rarely went well.
“I’d wake up at 2am going, ‘Oh my God, all those people saw me do that terrible gig!’ ” she laughs from her hotel in New Zealand, where she’s launching the Reactive world tour.
Regardless, the promoter would always implore her to come back the next week.
“He’d say, ‘That’s stand-up. You keep going until you’re good.’ He saw something in me.”
Despite such inauspicious beginnings, the London-born 50-year-old claims she never entertained an alternative career.
“I’ve had such a love-hate relationship with comedy because it’s been so difficult, and I found it at times quite traumatic to make my way through to reach any kind of success,” she says.
“And I’m not talking about selling out in Australia, I’m talking about making a living on the club circuit 10 to 15 years ago, which was what I was aspiring to.
“For whatever reason there’s something in me – I need to do it. It’s a catharsis. I get to express myself in a way that is the truest form of me.”
Growing up, Brister’s home life was sound-tracked by British TV comedy institutions such as Not the Nine O’Clock News, Blackadder, The Young Ones and The Two Ronnies.
Most important, though, was the work of Victoria Wood, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders – female comedians excelling in a world dominated by men.
“I cannot emphasise enough how important [they] were in terms of influencing my career,” she says. “For one, I found them hilariously funny. And two, they made me see there was a possibility to make a career out of comedy.”
When Brister first tried stand-up in the mid-’90s while pursuing a degree in drama and theatre at Middlesex University, such female comedic role models were thin on the ground.
“The main debate around comedy at the time was that women weren’t funny ... discuss,” she says. “So you had to deal with a lot of that. Misogyny at worst, and sexism at best.”
She persevered, picking up wins along the way such as her first ever sold-out show at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival in the early 2000s. Fast forward a few decades, and Brister sold out 115 dates on her 2022/2023 UK tour.
The key to reaching that level of success was, she says, spending “hours and hours” performing until she got to the point at which she was as comfortable on stage as off.
“It’s not until you get to that point that you can really relax into your own skin and be you,” she says. “It’s not the entirety of you, but audiences feel like this isn’t a character. When people come and see me, they will walk away and think they know me.”
Those attending the Reactive shows will see Brister dissecting key elements of her personality, such as “not thinking before I’m speaking”.
So, too, will she shine a light on her tendency to wear her emotions “very much on the surface”.
“And also,” she adds, “when I was younger I would be much more likely to apologise for my behaviour and go, ‘Oh God, sorry, I won’t do that again.’
“But I’m 50 now and I’m like, guys, this is it. I’m cooked. I’m not trying to make you like me any more. You just have to come to me.”
Jen Brister will be performing in Sydney at the Factory Theatre on June 4 and 5, and in Melbourne at the Thornbury Theatre on June 6.