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The Atlantic

Hannah Gadsby’s Genius Follow-Up to <em>Nanette</em>

On her current tour, the star comedian is having a conspicuously great time making humorless subjects hilarious.
Source: Emma McIntyre / Getty

“Had I known trauma would be so wildly popular,” says Hannah Gadsby to a roll of educated laughter at Boston’s Shubert Theater on June 19, “I might have budgeted my trauma better.” She knows why we’re here; we know why we’re here. We’re here because of , the breakout 2018 Netflix special in which Gadsby used her own experience of sexual violence to (in her words) “turn the laugh tap off.” To engineer a confrontation with pain and knowledge that, almost as a side effect, exploded the mechanism of stand-up comedy itself. Tension and release, tension and release—that’s how it

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