Last year, during months of lockdown in Melbourne, Michelle Brasier found the biggest plastic storage container she could buy and took long hot baths in it while sipping whisky. “It was 100 per cent bent knees but everything was under water,” she says. “Me inside my shower in a Bunnings tub.”
Seeking simple joys in life has long been the actor, writer, comedian and singer’s aim. Perhaps best known for performing with sketch group Aunty Donna and appearing on Shaun Micallef’s ABC TV show Mad As Hell, Brasier’s career as a “professional idiot” has flourished with mesmerisingly high-energy and anarchic musical comedy shows.
Her latest, Average Bear is is a happy-sad musical story about hope in among fear, fused by a love of whimsy and silliness. A history of cancer in Brasier’s family, including the death of her father and brother from the disease, means she has a 97 per cent chance of developing cancer too.
But Brasier has “zero fear”. Having started comedy because it was the scariest thing she could think of, she focuses on appreciating life’s tiny moments,
“When it’s a genetic thing, you don’t know how long you have,” she says. “Within my family I lost a lot and I lost it quickly. So I feel compelled to look for the joy and look at all the small things because I don’t know how long I have.
“If I’m lucky I will have forever. If I’m not, then I won’t. But at least I will have looked at them all. I will have patted all the dogs.”
After growing up in Wagga Wagga, Brasier studied musical theatre at Victorian College of the Arts. She made a splash as co-creator of award-winning comedy duo Double Denim with Laura Frew and has become a long-time collaborator with sketch group Aunty Donna on stage, YouTube and their Netflix series.
Winner of best newcomer at the Sydney Comedy Festival and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival’s director’s choice award for Double Denim Adventure Show in 2018, she won the 2020 MICF Moosehead Award.
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