Glaswegian comedian and broadcaster Julia Sutherland makes her debut at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival’s Gilded Balloon with her show ‘Exposed’. Having interviewed dozens of top comedians for her BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio Scotland series, she faces her toughest subject yet – herself!
Julia is known for critical observations and deeply personal confessional comedy. Her 2015 show at the Glasgow International Festival “Fat Chance” was picked up by BBC Radio 4, revealing her experiences of losing six stone (a whole Cheryl Cole), with stand-up and sketches filling the half hour special.
Mining her own stand-up material to create an imperfect character, she co-wrote the comedy play ‘Jail Mates’ with Gary Little, which they performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2016 (***** The Stage) and was then commissioned as a four part sitcom for BBC Radio Scotland.
Her BBC Radio 4 (‘It’s Funny and It’s True’) and her Scottish Comedy award nominated show for BBC Radio Scotland (‘A Funny Kind of…’ and ‘The Funny Life of…’) shows all involved her interviewing top comedians from all over the world, getting them to talk about their personal experiences of taboo subjects and reveal intimate details from their personal lives. Exploring the transformative power of comedy, they shone a light into dark places and covered everything from race, family, love, rape, murder and even death. They featured a wide range of comics such as Felicity Ward, Tommy Tiernan, Richard Gadd, Brendan Burns, Ashley Storrie, and many more!
Having spent so much of the last couple of years digging into the psyche of OTHER comedians, Julia decided there was one person she really wanted to crack – herself. Her key skill is empathy; connecting intimately with people – whether that’s one-to-one in a radio studio or with a live audience who secretly share her shortcomings. In this show – she manages to do both!
Despite her endlessly positive nature, Julia is seemingly never far from drama and calamity. Having only just recovered from the life-reassessing experience of turning 40, she’s had another tumultuous year personally – ‘consciously uncoupling’ from her husband of 10 years, and learning how to co-parent with grace! The break-up threatens to become a breakdown, but she’s attempting to re-brand the whole experience as a breakthrough…
