“This is very scary!” confesses Luisa Omielan, still adjusting to her surroundings. “I’m on a three-month tour of a country I’ve never been to before to do my first solo show. It’s pretty high up there in terms of adventure.”
The British comedian has a huge three months ahead of her in Australia, touring her wildly successful debut show, What Would Beyonce Do?! The story behind the show is a classic case of courage in the face of adversity. Essentially, when life gave Omielan lemons, she made lemonade. “My show started because I was heartbroken over a boy. I was on the beach and I was like, ‘Thank the Lord he dumped me! Dump me again – dump me three times – because I’m in Australia! Hallelujah!’”
There are many ways to bounce back from a broken heart, but Omielan has set the bar sky high: back in 2012, What Would Beyonce Do?! became one of the most successful debut shows in Edinburgh Fringe history. It was vindication for Omielan, whose persistence in pursuing her dreams has begun to pay off. “I had no agent, no PR, no industry interest. Nobody was interested in me. I had been gigging for years. This was my life: I wanted to do comedy. I did it throughout college, at university and I had been pursuing it for a long time. I put [this show] on and my only goal was to make the audience go batshit. I was like, ‘Just make the audience go crazy. OK, the industry isn’t interested, but I know the audience: when I kill it, they love me. I’ve just got to find a way to make them leave feeling like, ‘Wow, that was amazing.’’ So I just started focusing on that.”
There were promising signs early on for Omielan, with What Would Beyonce Do?! demonstrating the hallmarks of a cult hit. “What was amazing was the amount of people that identified with it,” she says. “Then I started getting an audience – quite a hardcore following in the UK – and a majority that don’t normally go to comedy nights.
“[Comedy can be] quite male and can be a bit chauvinistic and can be an ugly environment to be in … whereas, in my audiences, it’s a lot of women that wouldn’t normally go to a stand-up night and they absolutely love it. They leave and they feel very empowered and very good about themselves and they message me and tell me. I won’t lie, they go crazy. In London, they go absolutely mental. They leave bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, like, ‘Woah, that was amazing! I can conquer the world!’ And you’re like, ‘Yeah, you can! You go get ’em!’”
Omielan’s message of empowerment has taken on a life of its own. Her season at Edinburgh was enough to confirm that she was onto something special. “Seeing the queues, I was like, ‘Is this for me?!’ Now I cry when it’s not sold out!” she laughs.
Of course, with high praise comes enormous pressure, but Omielan is up to the challenge. “I want this show to be bigger, I want more people to see it,” she says. “I want this show to be famous around the world. I want everyone to see this show because I think it is an important show and I love how it makes people feel. It is pressure, but I’m confident in the show. It just speaks for itself. I just hope Australia gets on board with it and I hope they enjoy it and I hope I can give them a good time.”
Luisa Omielan’sWhat Would Beyonce Do?!is on at Factory Theatre onWednesday April 22 – Saturday April 25,
as part of Sydney Comedy Festival 2015.Luisa also appears at Enmore Theatre onSunday April 26.
