Joseph worked on a murder trial that took over Australia’s group chats and then turned the frenzy into a comedy show. We spoke about his show The Mushroom Lady and Me, his tour of India and the strange dance between a comedian and a room full of strangers.
For people coming to The Mushroom Lady and Me, what can they expect, and what do you want them to walk away with?
So, as you know, the show is The Mushroom Lady and Me. I worked for the judge as the associate on this trial in the pre-trial period leading up to the trial, and then I resigned right at the start of the trial to go to clown school.
What can they expect? Stories told by an idiot who happened to have something to do with this case everyone was talking about. Hopefully people walk away with a little bit of silliness, a little bit of hee hee hoo hoo ha ha in their hearts, that type of thing.
It’s a weird thing because I’m not a true crime person at all. Even the judge asked in the interview if I was interested in true crime and I said no. He asked if I liked criminal law and I also said no. That helped me not be infatuated with it. And you’re confronted with the drudgery of it.
Looking past the headline, what did that teach you about people, and does any of it end up in the show?
You’re seeing trauma in every direction: the victims’ families and also, without justifying anything, the accused often have severe trauma in their history.
It’s commonly known that people in intimate relationships, people who know each other, are killing each other. So the theme of love, romantic or familial, was a big theme in shaping the show: how people ache for love or yearn for love, and how they feel when they don’t have it.
These are real human elements.
This particular case is unusual: this woman who tried to take out multiple generations of people in such a specific and isolated way. But it’s also true that, of the seven murder trials I saw, five of the seven perpetrators were men. The problem of male violence is something that is uncomfortable for people to talk about collectively but literally very necessary to save lives.
Men can kill for many different reasons, from what I observed, but it’s often connected to love or its absence in some way. For women, it seemed narrower still. Usually a man has deeply hurt them, abused them, or they’re scorned or wounded. No great revelations, just observations.
I touch on some of these things in the show, and the love theme, directly or indirectly, was a guiding light through parts of the show. But yes, the intensity and consistency of the trauma, sitting with it every day and welcoming people to court, the victims and their families – it becomes very human, and you have to navigate it delicately. And so a question I considered more at the end of my time at the court was: how do I take care of myself and others in that space? Or any space.
For those who will be watching you for the first time, who are you on stage?
Storyteller, softly, softly, sharing my idiocy, feeling for the deep laughs. It makes more sense in the doing, in the witnessing.
In your earlier special, What Are the Chances. It starts in a standard stand-up format, and then suddenly you bring other elements…
In a longer show, you have more opportunities to establish a conventional way of doing comedy and then disrupt it. That’s always fun, and hopefully the audience enjoys it too.
Have you ever properly lost it on stage – laughed too hard?
For sure. I’m not not laughing on stage – if something’s really funny and takes me by surprise, I’ll laugh at it.
Even if I’m keeping a straight face for the purpose of the bit, if the audience can see the edge of a crack, it’s nice to let them in. It reveals and reminds them we’re just here to have fun.
Totally, like a symbiotic relationship?
Absolutely. The symbiotic aspect is huge and indispensable. Whether the audience is conscious of it or not, it’s a real dance. I think audiences often underestimate how much of a collaborator they are energetically.
Even if a show is scripted beat-for-beat and word-for-word, the audience is still a living, breathing organism. The show needs to be good – that helps – but the final equation includes the audience. Without that, there’s nothing.
You’ve taken your stand-up to India. What were you most nervous about, and what surprised you?
First and foremost: logistics. It can be a challenging place to move around from city to city. Performing in three cities, even with days in between, was what I was most apprehensive about.
We all know Indians love cricket, but when you go there you realise it’s not just a sport – it’s like a holistic devotion.
It’s such a diverse place. I mean, India is India, but it’s 1.5 billion people. When you’re on the ground, you feel how different the parts of the country are, and the sensibilities in each city.
That’s a great way to travel and see what makes people laugh...
Yeah. In India, and this goes for any place, people want to share their best selves with you. They project this positivity that’s really sweet. They want you to know the good things about their place and their people.
That’s true in a lot of places around the world. I was in America the last few months before Christmas, and even in smaller towns there was this urgency: ‘We want this outsider to know we’re not all bad, we’re not hostile to outsiders.’ They really wanted to show that.
Offstage, what does a typical day look like?
One thing that stops me going crazy is structure, but with space within the structure to do less. Usually I try to have a lot of reading time – if I’m not too busy, at least an hour or two a day.
At the moment there’s a lot of admin with the tour – organising visas for overseas. I’ve also been teaching law subjects at different universities. A lot of things, but right now it’s mainly getting this show as good as I can, so as it travels around Australia it becomes more polished and fun to share.
