by I’m with the comedian Ania Magliano in the afternoon. First, a cup of chai latte (“I gave up coffee to help with my anxiety levels”), followed by a visit to Fightzone, an east London gym where he regularly attends boxing classes for its anti-anxiety benefits. “In my body, when I’m anxious or angry, I hold it in my arms. I want to hit things,” Magliano says. “There’s a stereotype of ‘Can you imagine hitting someone when you’re boxing?’ And yes, sometimes I do.”
Audiences at the 25-year-old’s latest set, I Can’t Believe You Did This, will hear all about her forays into boxing, woven into a complex story of personal reconstruction. Nominated for best show at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards, it is deceptively cheerful. There’s nonsense about a terrible haircut, dating, volunteering gone wrong, and a threesome. These jokes cover more sensitive topics: breast reduction surgery, the need to stay safe, and, at the bottom of it all, trauma.
All the stories are true, although Magliano laughs because he boxes worse than the program implies. He tried it for the first time before the pandemic. “I was going through a difficult time in my life. This was actually the thought process: I like warm weather and have attended two boxing classes. So I Googled ‘box camp Thailand’.” He quit his job, left London knowing he would have to move in with his mother when he returned and spent a month at a Thai boxing retreat. “No one does something that extreme if they don’t have something extreme to overcome.”
That extreme was a sexual assault. How an experience like that reflects on your life is the heart of Magliano’s new show.
There are clichés about “trauma” shows in comedy: the jokes give way to solemnity in the 40th minute to make the audience cry. When a performer makes a mistake, he can feel raw, unresolved, uncomfortable. Magliano spent months, almost 40 previews, trying to find balance. Instead of focusing on the experience itself (the show had to be fun, and he also didn’t want to bring up unwanted memories for anyone who watched it), Magliano carefully and deliberately talks about its impact. Why did he want to feel physically strong? Why was he avoiding romantic connection? Why did the botched haircut make her feel so helpless?
“It went through varying degrees of exploring the parallels between having a bad haircut and more traumatic things,” he says. “She was struggling to get a difficult topic worked on stage in a way that didn’t leave people feeling like complete shit. “That’s what pushed him in quite a different direction.”
In 2016, just before heading to Cambridge University to study English, Magliano took a job at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, intending to improve his theater skills. Once there, classmates recommended comedy shows. She remembers a Desiree Burch routine about oral sex: “It was the first time I saw a comedy that empowered me and made me feel good about myself. It was a revelation. I thought: this is what I want to do.”
Five days after the strip, she tried to stand up herself. It didn’t go well: “There’s something liberating about your first gig going wrong. I remember walking off stage thinking, if that’s the worst that can happen, I can handle it. “If that’s dying on your ass, that’s kind of a rush.”
She was determined to make comedy her college hobby and gravitated towards the famous group Footlights. She found a strict, male-dominated hierarchy. While she participated in the society tour, she “had negative experiences in every way possible.” As one of two female actors, she found that men were reluctant to give them funny roles.
So Magliano and two friends created Stockings, a comedy society for women and non-binary people. There would be no auditions, just a supportive space to develop ideas and act. This year in Edinburgh, a former member approached him on the street. “She said, ‘I would never have done comedy if it wasn’t for that.’”
After Cambridge, he moved to the capital, got a job in a new company and began performing in comedy at night, eating “a sad tub of Huel” for dinner. But upon returning home after escaping from Thailand, the pandemic began. Without live shows, Magliano began uploading videos to TikTok. “You get addicted to the likes and views, but you don’t get the reward of hearing people laugh.”
When live concerts returned, she “wiped the slate clean” and focused on new material. “I had a resentment that I would get criticized for not having enough jokes,” she says. Her debut show, Absolutely No Worries If Not, arrived at the 2022 Edinburgh slot full of jokes. In some ways, it was a classic introductory hour, with jokes about Magliano’s family (Polish mother, Italian father and their divorce), the quarter-life crisis and bisexuality, but also surreal detours about “horse girls.” and Jacqueline Wilson. She initially wrote it as a coming out story, but guided by its director, Jordan Brookes, winner of the Edinburgh Comedy Award, she realized that “coming out was not an important story in my life.” ; That later became the joke.”
That desire to go beyond the obvious is perfected in Magliano’s latest show, as he plants seeds with each joke that bear fruit as the hour progresses. She says: “I wanted to do a show where all parties had to be present. She wanted to feel like there was a reason for it to exist.”
There was a version of the program that was more difficult to do. I would leave previews feeling completely exhausted
She had never considered talking about her breast reduction surgery on stage, but a conversation with comedian Sarah Keyworth helped her see that she was “the perfect amount of vulnerable and silly.” And it’s unusual: the audience says, ‘I’m listening!’ I’m glad I can talk about it now, it’s very liberating. But this is quite personal. The surgery was a big decision and I never told anyone about it in my life. “I thought people might judge me.”
When he contributed other elements, a theme emerged. “Some people said, ‘You have a lot of jokes about violent men, what’s going on?’ There is a dark current.”
She delved into that. In any show that addresses personal trauma, the performer must decide how much to reveal. “Sometimes people don’t realize that it’s a vulnerable thing,” Magliano says. “Especially if you seem comfortable talking about it on stage.” The subtle approach she chose allows her to be candid without compromising her own well-being as she performs night after night. “There was a version of the program that was much more difficult to do. I would come out of the previews feeling completely exhausted.”
He originally spoke about the legal complexities surrounding sexual assault. Many people are unable to speak publicly about being assaulted after receiving threats or legal action. It’s something Magliano has experienced personally. But her attempts to incorporate those details into the program were “irreparably changing the mood” among the public, forcing her to abandon them.
Magliano still plays with tense moments: One particular sexual assault joke he kept on the show often elicits gasps. “That’s who I am,” he says. “Many of my friends who have had similar experiences joke with each other and talk frankly. The actual way this is talked about is not something I’ve ever seen people do on a show.”
That reality connected with people. “The most significant compliments I received were from people who really identified with it. The way they spoke to me was incredible, but also implicitly sad; I wish you couldn’t relate to this.” Fortunately, in the darkness there was light: many people also showed him photos of their own bad haircuts.
Sexual misconduct remains an unresolved issue in the arts. Magliano’s Edinburgh run came before the allegations against Russell Brand were published and he wonders whether the public would have reacted differently “if everyone had been thinking about comedians being sexual predators”.
But she feels it is a sign of progress that the public is now actively embracing a young woman putting on a show of this nature. “She’s come far enough to be able to talk about this on stage and people are open to it.”
Now, the feelings Magliano explores on the show, which led her to that Thai boxing camp, aren’t so urgent. But the hobby still has its place, she tells me next to the boxing ring. “I don’t know how much what I’ve learned here could help me in a fight,” she says. “But it means you have a little secret in your back pocket.”
Magliano tours I Can’t Believe You Did This, from January 12 to March 28; The tour begins in Belfast..
Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from Rape Crisis on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support at 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html
