Interview with Cal Wilson
Pixie-like, cute as a button…and a Kiwi…Cal Wilson is probably the last person you would think would take on one of the roughest occupations in the Australian sporting arena as a subject for comedy. However, Cal’s new show “Up There Cal Wilson” is about exactly that. “It’s about falling in love with footy,” says Cal, “being a New Zealander falling in love with Aussie Rules, that’s practically treason, and as a sport’s hater I can’t actually believe that I love a sport but I do.” But this is not a show necessarily geared towards the sports nut, nor does it come from someone who is an authority on the sport. “It’s a show about footy for people who love footy or hate footy by someone who knows nothing about footy,” says Cal, “and it’s all about how I end up choosing a team.”
So the burning question is: did she choose a team. “I have but it’s a secret that is revealed at the end of the show,” she says, “so I go through each team like on the basis of …god mascot, good club song, any off field scandal…uniforms…all the really important stuff that goes into making up footy, and I’ve got some theories about the rules of the game.”
“I’m going for the low-fi approach,” says Cal, “I have a fuzzy felt board instead of a powerpoint presentation ‘cause I think everyone’s got a computer…I’ve returned to the good old days of fuzzy felts… I do a little bit of presentations of plays that I think should happen and I’ve got visual aids for what the uniforms look like.”
If you don’t know Cal’s name you will definitely know her face if you were a fan of Channel Ten’s Skithouse. Cal also featured at last year’s comedy festival along side Skithouse cohort Scott Brennan as one half of “The Wurlitzers”. She has a lot of character work behind her and is widely known for that. However Cal says her new show “is a return to stand up for me, I’ve done character for the last few years and it’s actually exciting and scary and exciting to be doing stand up as myself again.”
If you think you can handle the sheer grunt of this show, check out the details of Cal Wilson’s new show at Up There, Cal Wilson