by I’m with comedian Ania Magliano for the evening. First, a cup of chai latte (“I quit the cafe to help with anxiety levels”), followed by a visit to Fightzone, a gym in east London, where she attends regular boxing classes for her anti-anxiety benefits. “In my body, when I’m anxious or angry, I hold it in my hands. I want to hit things,” says Magliano. “There’s a bit of a stereotype of, ‘Do you imagine punching someone while boxing?’. And, yes, sometimes I do.”
Viewers of the 25-year-old’s latest series, I Can’t Believe You’ve Done This, will hear about her boxing endeavors intertwined with a complex story of personal reinvention. Nominated for best show at the Edinburgh comedy awards, it’s deceptively light hearted. There are silly things about terrible haircuts, dating, missing volunteer work and threesomes. These jokes provide cover for more sensitive topics: breast reduction surgery, the urge to stay safe and, at the heart of it, trauma.
All the stories are true, although Magliano claims she is worse at boxing than the show suggests. She first tried it before the pandemic. “I was going through a difficult point in my life. The real thought process was this: I like warm weather and I’ve done two boxing classes. So I Googled ‘boxcamp Thailand’.” She quit her job, left London knowing she would have to move in with her mother when she returned, and spent a month at a boxing retreat in Thailand. “No one does anything extreme unless they have something extreme to contend with.”
That big thing was sexual assault. How such an experience comes into your life is at the heart of Magliano’s new show.
There are cliches about “trauma” shows in comedy: jokes giving way to solemnity at the 40 minute mark to make the audience cry. When a performer gets it wrong, it can be raw, unresolved, uncomfortable. Magliano spent months, almost 40 previews trying to find the balance. Rather than focusing on the experience itself – the show had to be funny, and she didn’t want to bring up unwanted memories for anyone watching – Magliano talks carefully and deliberately about her influences. Why did she want to feel physically strong? Why was she avoiding a romantic connection? Why did the botched haircut make her feel so powerless?
“It took different steps to explore the parallels between a bad haircut and more traumatic things,” she says. “I was struggling to find a difficult topic to work on stage in a way that didn’t make people feel like complete shit. That pushed him in a very different direction.”
In 2016, just before she went to Cambridge University to study English, Magliano got a job at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, intending to improve her knowledge of theatre. Once there, colleagues recommended comedy shows. She recalls Desiree Burch’s oral sex routine: “It was the first time I saw comedy that empowered me and made me feel good about myself. It was a revelation. I was like: this is what I want to do.”
Five days after the edge, she tried to standup herself. It didn’t go well: “There’s something redeeming about your first gig going badly. I remember walking off stage thinking: if that’s the worst that could happen, I can handle it. If that’s dying on your ass, it’s kind of a rush.”
She was determined to make comedy her university hobby, heading towards the famous Footlights troupe. She found a strict hierarchy, dominated by men. Taking part in the society’s traveling show, she “had negative experiences in as many ways as possible”. As one of two female performers, she found the men reluctant to give them funny parts.
So Magliano and two friends founded Stockings, a comedy club for women and non-binary people. There would be no hearings, but a supportive space to develop and express ideas. At Edinburgh this year, a former member approached her on the street. “She said: ‘I would never do comedy if it wasn’t done that way.'”
Post-Cambridge, she moved to the capital, got a job at a startup, and started doing comedy in the evening, eating a “sad tub of Huel” for dinner. But living at home after escaping from Thailand, the pandemic began. With no live shows, Magliano started posting videos on TikTok. “You get addicted to your likes and opinions, but you don’t get the reward of hearing people laugh.”
With live gigs back, she “wiped the slate clean” and focused on new material. “I had a bit of a chip on my shoulder that I would get criticized for not having enough jokes,” she says. Her first show, Absolutely No Worries If Not, hit the edge of Edinburgh 2022 full of punchlines. In some ways it was a classic first hour, with jokes about the Magliano family (Polish mom, Italian dad and their divorce), a quarter life crisis, and bisexuality – but also surreal twists about “horse girls” and Jacqueline Wilson. She originally wrote it as a coming out story, but under the guidance of her director, Edinburgh Comedy Award winner Jordan Brookes, she realized that “coming out is not a huge story in my life; which then became a joke”.
That desire to go beyond the obvious can be found in Magliano’s latest show, as she plants seeds with each tease that emerges as time goes on. She says: “I wanted to make a show where everyone was there. I wanted to feel like there was a reason for it.”
There was a version of the show that was more difficult to do. I would come away from previews feeling completely rinsed out
She never thought about talking about her breast reduction surgery on stage, but a chat with comedian Sarah Keyworth helped her see that it was “the perfect size to be vulnerable and silly. And something unusual – viewers are like: ‘I’m listening!’ I am happy to talk about it now, it is very cheap. But this is quite personal. The surgery was a big decision and I didn’t tell everyone in my life. I thought people might judge me.”
As she introduced other elements, a theme emerged. “Some people were like: ‘You’ve got a lot of jokes about men being violent, what’s going on?’ There is a dark undercurrent.”
She delved deeper into that. In any show dealing with personal trauma, the performer has to decide how much to reveal. “Sometimes people don’t realize it’s a fragile thing to do,” says Magliano. “Especially if you seem comfortable talking about it on stage.” The subtle approach she decided on allowed her to be authentic without compromising her own well-being as she performed night after night. “There was a version of the show that was much harder to do. I would come out of previews feeling completely rinsed.”
She first spoke about the legal complexities of sexual assault. Many people are unable to speak publicly about assault after receiving legal threats or legal action. It’s something Magliano has personal experience with. But attempts to incorporate those details into the show “changed the mood irrevocably” among viewers, forcing her to drop them.
Magliano still plays with moments of tension – a particular joke usually provokes a sexual assault that she has kept in the show. “That’s really who I am,” she says. “A lot of my friends who have had similar experiences, we tell each other jokes and talk honestly. The real way it’s talked about is not something I’ve seen people do in a show.”
That reality touched people. “The most meaningful suggestions I received were from people who could really relate to it. The way they spoke to me was so incredible, but also understandably sad; I wish you could have nothing to do with this.” Fortunately, there was light in the darkness – many people showed her photos of their own bad haircuts too.
Sexual misconduct remains an unresolved issue in the arts. Magliano’s run in Edinburgh came before the publication of the allegations against Russell Brand and she wants to engage the audience in a different way “if everyone in the world was thinking about how comedians are sexual predators”.
But she feels that it is a sign of progress that audiences are now actively accepting a young woman in this kind of show. “It’s been long enough that I can talk about this on stage and people are happy with it.”
Now, the emotions Magliano explores in the show, which took her to a Thai boxing camp, are less urgent. But the hobby still has its place, she tells me next to the boxing ring. “I don’t know how much I’ve learned here that would help me in the fight,” she says. “But it means you have a little secret in your back pocket.”
Magliano Tours I Can’t Believe You Did This, January 12 to March 28; The journey 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 United States, 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
