American clown Spencer Novich is coming back to Australia, this time with a solo show called Chatter, which takes you on an “absurd hyper-physical ego trip deep into the bowels of his psyche”. It’s promising to be quite different to the characters he has played in Strut & Fret’s Blanc de Blanc and its Encore show. We chat with Novich, who, in the show, wrestles on a twisted serio-comic journey, with the inner critic most of us know all too well. In this interview, Spencer Novich chats with us about clowning, his work at Cirque du Soleil, winning a prize in a French circus competition, and of course, his show Chatter. which is making its Australian debut at Brisbane Festival 2025 this month.
As we’re chatting today, you’re in Houston. Are you from there?
No. My brother lives here with my nieces. He went to school out here. I was born in Boston and then travelled around a little bit, but mostly based in East Coast. I’m not such a Texan; my brother isn’t either. He’s in a very liberal pocket but it’s one of the few. It’s I think it’s a pretty strange, I think it’s very quickly a very strange place, like very America in a not so good way.
I’ll start with a really obvious question: what made you decide to become a clown.
What made me decide to become a clown? I started doing youth circus. My parents sent me away over the summers to do this camp in rural Vermont called Circus Smirkus.
I don’t know why but I’ve heard of it
Have you? A lot of people have done it. Even currently at West End Electric, there’s a Circus Smirkus guy. There’s a few on the Strut & Fret cruises right now. If you’re an American circus artist, usually a lot of them have come through there or have gone through there. So, I started doing that. But I never wanted to be a clown. I wanted to do everything but clowning, actually…
Was it wrong to call you a clown? Do you define yourself as a clown?
I do and I don’t, and I think it’s a very triggering word for a lot of people. When I was a kid, I always wanted to do aerials because I thought that was the most impressive thing. But then, you know, I’m a scrawny little human., and I still am, and it was not natural for me. And so, I made my way through every discipline in the youth circus until I found clowning. And people were like, “oh, you should do this. This is what you’re good at”. And then, yeah, I sort of fell in love with it. It’s where all the misfits are, and I classify myself as that. I just sort of fell in love with it, I think after, after being rejected from everything else. That’s how I fell into it. And then I went to theatre school, and at theatre school I started studying with other sort of clown teachers. That’s sort of how it all started.
When you were a teenager and you discovered clowning, did you know that you wanted to be in the performing arts?
I think I always knew I wanted to do theatre, and I had a very deep passion for Cirque du Soleil. I loved watching Cirque du Soleil growing up. I loved watching, John Gilkey, who wasn’t really classified as a clown, but more as these eccentric characters that would lead people on the journey of the show. So that was where my passion was and then I went to school for theatre, and once I went to school for theatre, I was thinking “yeah, this is what I want to do.” And also I think it’s a running trend in my life that I think I’m not really good at anything else. I don’t know what else I would do if I wasn’t doing this. I think about that quite often, actually.
I’m sure that’s not true!
I actually, that’s very kind of you, but I really don’t know what I’d do if I wasn’t in the entertainment industry.
Is your family in the arts?
No. My dad went to MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), a technical university over here. So farthest from it. And my Mum is an illustrator so, she’s in visual art.
She’s creative.
Totally. They’re not so much stage people, although they love the theatre. I remember going to see a lot of musical theatre when I was a kid. My sister works in video games, and my brother sort of works in technical startups, so we’re across the board.
Did all of you get sent to the Circus Smirkus?
No, that was just a me thing. I will have to ask them why that was.
Ha! Maybe they just wanted to get rid of you one holidays.
Exactly. Trying to get rid of me for a summer. So they’re like ”this seems like you might be something you’d like.”
And look what they did: they created a clown!
Exactly, which, surprisingly, I think they love. One of my favourite stories is when I came back from circus camp, I wanted to buy juggling torches. And my dad was like “there’s no way I’m going to let you buy those.” And I asked “how about how about the knives?” And he said, “okay, you can do the knives, but I don’t want to see you do it.” Then every time he would have business over for dinner, he’d always yell at me to go get the knives for the business guests.
He would show you off. You should have started charging him for the act!.
Exactly. Yeah, 100%.
How did you decide what style of clown you wanted to be? Any influences – you mentioned John Gilkey from Cirque du Soleil earlier.
Smirkus was like a gateway to Ringling by the Ringling Brothers, a very traditional American circus. Like red nose, all the painted on makeup, the big shoes, that type of thing. That’s actually where a lot of my teachers had studied and even some of my favourite clowns went through there. I had nothing against it, well maybe a little against it, but I didn’t have much interest in Ringling. It just didn’t speak to me in the same way that it maybe spoke to some of the other kids that were doing it. It was also a job that a lot of kids straight out of Smirkus ended up going to.
I think although I loved clowning, I also wanted to explore theatre, acting, and making my own work. And so through going to training at university, that’s when I started to sort of see what I was excited by in terms of other types of clowns and stuff. I was really drawn to clowns like Bill Irwin and David Shiner and I was able to take some master classes with them. I think that’s what pulled me in the most. And then, I was given the opportunity to study with clown teachers in the more theatrical world, a little bit stuff that you might not see in like performance as much. I trained with somebody named Orlando Pabatoy, who is a disciple of this clown teacher, Chris Bayes, who trains a lot of actors.
You don’t see too much of that work commercially, but I loved how real it was and how emotionally accessible these clowns were. And it wasn’t something that I was really taught. You know, when I was a kid, it was a lot of “oh, you can move in this fun and silly way”, but then really understanding that the stakes are real and like that it’s not put on, that the clown is really going through the depths of these emotions was really exciting and eye opening to me. So that’s that that drew me into that world a little bit for sure.
Are you normally Australia based?
No, I feel like I have been and I want to be and I don’t know why I never applied for permanent residency because I’ve been there for so long.
You were doing Blanc de Blanc around Australia for a long time so I assumed you lived here for a long time.
Forever! Probably in the past ten years, then the pandemic happened, but like before that, I was there more than I was here because I was doing all the Blanc de Blanc, and before that working with Scott [Maidment of Strut & Fret] on other projects. I do question why I didn’t pursue it. I should have. I think it’s hard though: I have a dog and because you can’t get dogs in there.
So no, I’ve mostly been based out of New York, Vegas and LA, and for the most part in New York. Vegas, if there’s a contract and I’ll base myself there at that time. But New York is where I am or trying to be.
Just coming back to the Australian bit, you worked with Scott and Strut & Fret and on the show Blanc de Blanc. And I think you’ve worked with him on the new show Sabrage recently in London. How did you come to work with Scott?
So, I was doing a project in Vegas at the Cosmopolitan Hotel with this company called Spiegel World. And Scott came to watch it, and afterwards he reached out to me and said, “I’d love to work with you on a new project. Are you available to come down for the Adelaide Fringe?” And at that point, I was under contract with this other casino show. So, I said to him, “oh, wow. I would absolutely love to do that. It’s always been a dream of mine to go down to Australia and everything I’ve heard of the Fringe sounds incredible, but I’m under contract for the next” – I think at that point it was like 7 or 8 more months – “but maybe we can just stay in touch?” And he was like, “absolutely. Let’s stay in touch.” Then, within a couple of weeks, the show I was in closed. So, I quickly got back on the phone and said, “hey do you still have an opportunity available. I’m 100% ready and I would love to join.” And so that was my first opportunity to work with Scott was in this show called Fear and Delight.
I never saw that one. From memory it was immersive and around a dinner?
It was a dinner show. It was outside. It was a wild show. It sort of took part in the park across from where the garden is, I think. .People would start in the garden and then they’d be marched across. They’d have oysters and there was a hot tub experience. You’d order a drink and then with that drink, you’d be taken into like a secret hot tub in the back, and you would sit in a hot tub.
Completely ridiculous!
Yeah. It was completely ridiculous and incredible. I think that’s what I love so much about working with Scott. I’ve never worked with a director producer that takes as many wild risks and pushes boundaries as much as he does. I think that’s what’s so exciting, and why I love collaborating with him, is that I know that I will never present an idea to him that he thinks is too crazy. He’ll figure out a way to make it happen, which is very exciting for like as an artist, that’s like the most exciting thing somebody can sort of give you is like, just say, “hey, yeah, let’s do that. That’s crazy. Let’s do that.” So, I’ve been working with him since 2015, I think.
A decade, wow.
A decade. Yeah, and on a lot of shows, and in a lot of different places. I feel they’re doing something really special. He is just so good at creating a world for people to escape into. You really are a part of the action in a way. I feel that for with a lot of work, for example, Cirque du Soleil creates these massive spectacles, but a lot of times it feels like there’s a little bit of a divide between the world and you. That’s just like the nature, the design of the show and what they’re doing. But, with Scott, the audience is essentially cast in the show. So, it’s really, really fun environment to be a part of.
And talking of Cirque du Soleil, you did get to work with them. What did you what did you do with them?
I was in a show called Kà in Las Vegas. It was my first job, and it was an amazing experience. It was a massive show. When I auditioned for Cirque, we did a two-day audition. I think each day was 9 to 5. It’s like a series of cuts all the way down. Really intense. And all that I was doing in the auditions were comedy. But then on the last day, the last exercise I did was a very dramatic exercise. It ended up being why I got called in for Kà, because the character was not a comedy character. It was really sort of the villain in the show. I didn’t get to do so much comedy in that show, but did a lot of like wire work, which was very exciting.
I remember I was at home when I got the offer with my parents and on the phone, the person who offered me the role, he said, “oh, just to make sure, do you have vertigo or are you afraid of heights?” And then I put down the phone and I yelled out to my parents: “do I have vertigo?” And they were like, no. And then I was like, “no, no, no, I’m good”. So my first big job was with them. And a crazy job. I think the takeaway from that was how do you keep a show that you’re doing 476 times a year fresh?
Exactly. How do you not get bored?
Yeah, exactly. These stages are massive. And, even when you’re on a playground that’s that massive, you have to figure out how to keep it fresh and alive when you’re doing that many shows. That was sort of my first job in the circus. And it sort of set me off in that world.
What a crazy first job!
I know! I feel so fortunate. It was such a crazy opportunity. And, it what was my dream for so long to work in this environment.
I also see that you won the bronze medal and the Moulin Rouge prize at the Festival Mondiale de Cirque de Demain in Paris. What did you perform? How did you find out about the competition and what does the recognition mean to you? All those things!
All those kinds of things. I can talk about it a little bit. And then I have a I have a fun, fun little story about how terrible my French is. So, I performed like a variation of my sound effects act, in which I sort of do hundreds of sounds and sort of body lip sync it. I created a version of that for Blanc as well, and a lot of shows I go in.
So, the Paris festival, I first learned about it because I think it had always been on my radar from Circus Smirkus. A lot of people from Circus Smirkus ended up going to the ENC, a circus school up in Montreal. When you go to ENC, you really have your eyes set on doing the Paris festival because it’s really just a really huge scouting event. It’s also the Circus Festival of Tomorrow [direct translation of Festival Mondiale de Cirque de Demain] so people are presenting new things and that festival is always looking out for new things. So, I had always sort of heard about it peripherally, and I had a couple friends that had done it. I started building a version of my sound effects act. I applied a couple times and didn’t get in. And then I did the Cirque du Soleil cabaret one year, so then I had a great tape of the act inside of like a Cirque stage and I sent it over and then I got accepted to it. I had to ask for time off to go do it. So I went up to my artistic director at Kà and I said “I got invited to do this thing it’s called Cirque de de-men” . My French is so bad. It’s so embarrassing. But I said Cirque de de-men.
That kind of sounds Quebecois!
A little bit, maybe. So then I went and I did the whole festival, and then I won these prizes and, came back and said “thank you so much for giving me the time off.” And she said “oh, how was the volunteer program?” Oh, and I said “what?” And she said “Cirque du Monde. How was the volunteer program?” At that time, Cirque du Soleil had a volunteer program called Cirque du Monde.
Du monde: of the world. Ah!
And she thought I was asking for time off to do a Cirque du Soleil sponsored volunteer program, and I was actually asking for time off to do a major festival scouting! So, my very terrible French ended up getting me approved to go there. It was an incredible experience. I feel like a lot of times with those festivals, you never really know if you’re ready to do it until you do it. And I would say I wasn’t ready to do it, but it was very exciting. I think I felt a little bit like an outsider because once I got there, I could feel the environment in the competition in a way that I didn’t know it was going to be like this.
It was very friendly, but you could just tell how important this was for everybody’s career in a way that I wasn’t very aware of. I think everybody came in with these extraordinary costumes and incredible lighting design and all this stuff. I came in with a CD and an undershirt. I really came in like here’s my mp3 and I’m going to do this weird thing.
The act has evolved so much over the time, especially in Blanc. Lighting has become such an important part of my act in a way that it would have been really nice to have a designer back in the day. But I was honestly really unprepared for it, but it was very well received. What a strange thing to compete in circus where every discipline is completely different! I’m competing against these incredible Chinese jugglers who are bounce juggling five balls, while one is standing on the other’s head, and I’m doing like a little lip syncing. It feels very strange to do that.
The experience was incredible. It opened a lot of doors. Whereas with Cirque du Soleil, I was going in and doing somebody else’s work. I was basically really coming in as an actor and in the Paris festival, they gave me a space to really share my work. That was a really incredible opportunity to be able to share what I do in this world. It was an incredible experience. I’d love to go back one day and see it again.
So physical comedy, which is what a lot of clowning is, can obviously transcend language. How do you ensure that when you’re performing in non-English speaking countries, that the humour connects with the audiences or even in English speaking countries when it is purely physical and you’re not speaking?
It’s a really great question. That’s really interesting because specifically when I’m doing my sound effects work, I try to adapt it as much as possible. A lot of my work has been built on understanding who the audience is that I’m playing to. And that’s really hard when you’re just stepping in for a contract and you haven’t had time. One of my former clown teachers, Jef Johnson used to travel with this show, Slava’s Snow Show. He would always talk about how the rhythm would dictate the laugh in every different country. So, when he would land in a new country, he’d just walk around and feel the pacing of how everybody was reacting. Like the difference between New York and Spain versus Japan. How that internal rhythm relates to the comedy he was doing on stage.
I think there’s definitely a truth behind that. I very specifically will need to adapt the Sound Effects Act when I go to different places – even just doing it like in Vegas versus London versus Sydney, there’s huge changes in the references. I always feel like it’s the strongest to really adapt to the city you’re in rather than sort of play in a broad sense. But a lot of stuff can play in a broad sense as well. So, when I went to the Netherlands, I asked my friends who are Dutch “is this funny here? Will this play here? Is this too rude? Is this not rude enough?“
I have gotten very, very used to an Australian audience. Australian audiences are my favourite, and I’m not just saying that. Australian audiences are really willing to get into it with the performer in a way that I feel there’s sometimes a little bit more of a divide in other places. You can really push boundaries in Australia in a way that I think doesn’t really read in other countries.
But yes, I just try to be as adaptable as possible. And if something doesn’t work, I don’t lean into it, I change it. That’s the key for me. But a lot of stuff, it is universal. Like, it is fun to watch transformations and people turn into different animals. There’s something universal about that for sure.
Now to turn to the actual reason we’re chatting today: How would you describe the show Chatter?
We’ve spent this time talking sort of a lot about my comedy. There is comedy in this show. It pulls on everything that is exciting to me as an artist. And part of that is comedy. It’s a very personal show to me. The show is about what choices we make when we feel we don’t have a power to make any choice. It’s sort of told through my lens as a physical comedian who was diagnosed with autoimmune disease. And when I received that diagnosis, this thing that I was talking to you about of what else could I do if I can’t do this? And what am I going to do? That really came to the forefront because I was suddenly in a position where I physically could not do the only thing that I can make a living doing. And beyond make a living doing, feel passionate about.
So, it’s not strictly comedy, but there is comedy in it. Even that feels more serious than it is.
Reading the description on the Brisbane Festival website, I wondered if Chatter was going to make me anxious seeing it. A show about an anxious clown could potentially make me anxious too.
It could. I think that’s the beauty. My favourite things that I’ve seen have felt like a roller coaster ride for me. I want to laugh. I want to really laugh very deeply. And I also want to feel sad, and I want to feel a little scared and I want to feel a little anxious. So, my hope is that when people come see this, they sort of go on that journey. That’s my hope. Because I’m going on that journey every night. It’s serious, it’s comedy. It has a lot in it.
I think because it’s a reflection of what my life has been like and also what it feels like a lot of people sometimes have this crossroads in their life where they have to decide, or they think they can’t continue with something. Or maybe they can or maybe they don’t want to anymore and they just don’t know don’t know it yet. But that’s a bit of the title, along comes this voice, this chatter that we hear. How do we how do we negotiate with that voice when it’s trying to protect us? And maybe it’s protecting us out of fear, or maybe it’s protecting us because something really serious is going on. That’s what the show is.
May I ask what the autoimmune is? Because of the reference to the 8 hour enemas in the blurb, I wondered if it was Crohn’s.
It’s ulcerative colitis, so it’s sort of like a subset. It’s a very interesting thing. You know the I had somebody come and see a version of it when I did a version of it in New York about almost a year ago after the show. I’m always asking myself “do I want to keep doing this show?” Anytime. That’s me in general. “Do you want to do this show?” With anything, I always try to ask myself “why am I doing this? Do I want to keep doing this?” I say it with everything. Maybe that’s my own thing just checking in with myself. And at some point I ask “do I want to do this show?” And doing this show in New York was sort of me wondering “do I want to continue with this?” I’m going to see how this goes and let’s see.
I talk about medication in the show, I allude to it. I don’t really ever say what it is, but somebody came up to me and just showed me the exact same pills that I used to take afterwards. They were moved to share that because when you go through that type of thing, it’s an experience.
Did the show come about pretty much when you got the diagnosis and went through all of those thoughts and feelings and fears about what the future might look like. Is that kind of when you decided to make the show?
No, actually. It’s a bit of a story. Deciding to do it happened well after the diagnosis, in some way. So, I first started having some scary symptoms when I was doing Blanc de Blanc Encore at the Sydney Opera House. So, I arrived at Encore and I wasn’t feeling great. Then as Blanc de Blanc Encore continued, it started getting worse. Everybody in the cast sort of was having some sort of issue so, we all sort of chalked it up to it being the same thing. So, we started giving each other remedies and thinking it must be like the employee dining room or saying “take this tea. This tea really helped me.”
Like everyone having gastro or something.
Yeah, like everybody was having gastro. But later, I found out that one of the cast members was pregnant. So, I was taking advice from somebody who was getting morning sickness, and I was having like an autoimmune disease kick in. So, the tea wasn’t really helping.
Basically, it got so bad to the point that I was losing a lot of weight and on the ground. I’d be on the ground in the dressing room and then walk the stage, tell a couple jokes, leave, go on the ground. The pain was so intense and, going to a doctor in Sydney and being like, hey, here are my symptoms. This is what I’m dealing with. And them saying “yeah, maybe it’s cancer” and me saying “I have to do a show tonight! I have to be the clown tonight!” So, there was like a lot of that and then an atrocious 36 hour flight at the peak of the worst I’ve ever been in my life, and then going through all that. While that was happening, I wasn’t like, hey, I should really make a show about this.
No, I didn’t think so. But you never know.
Of course. You never know, exactly. Although I wouldn’t put it past myself to do that, to be like “Oh, man, this is terrible. I gotta make a show!” But basically, it wasn’t too long after that that that the pandemic happened and I used that downtime in the pandemic to sort of think. I just really thought you have this sort of this harrowing experience, where in many ways it feels like you’re given a second chance because medicine works, and it might not, but it does. You really put everything into focus. What do I want to be doing? which is going back to the thing I said before. What do I want to be doing? Do I want to be doing this thing? Or do I not want to be doing this? How do I want to spend my life? Like what? How do I want to design my life in that way?
And one of the really important things to me was I want to make a show. I always wanted to make my show, a show that was my thing. I didn’t want it to be about this disease. It was never a part of it, but then slowly as I was creating it I started to go, “oh no, this is what this is about.” It was just in the back of my head. It was also that chatter. It was always there but I didn’t want to. Diseases like the Crohn’s and autoimmune and IBD are very stigmatised. I don’t think I was ready at that time to really talk about it in any capacity. Then slowly, as I was doing the first workshop of the show, I realised I know it’s a part of the show but I didn’t want it to be what the show was about.
And technically, it’s not what it’s about. I think that it is a show about what choices we make when we feel like we can’t make them, which is very applicable. But once again, it’s told through my lens. And my lens has this. Then I started connecting with people. And my first point of contact was my friend Steve Toulmin, who was actually the sound designer on Blanc de Blanc. Originally, I met him doing lots of Scott’s shows, and we really sort of clicked in a way. We started just building some things together because there was nothing else going on in the world at that time.
Then the next person I connected with was my other friend, Lorenzo Pisani, who I had worked with on the show in Vegas. He was in the show as the host, and I was there as the weird little co-host. I always trusted him. He’s this incredible movement director, physical comedy director for a lot of Broadway stuff like Beetlejuice and Frozen and I think he’s in Australia now. He’s usually over there to do some of those installs and stuff.
So, I had this little core team, and we would just sort of play around with stuff and have conversations and keep our brains active when we didn’t know if theatre would ever exist again. I think that was also nice, because I really knew that I was doing this for the right reasons, because I felt like I needed to tell this story no matter what the story would be. Then over time, I just sort of realised, oh, that’s this.
I didn’t shy away from what it was really about and I really sort of leaned into that. In people’s response to the work, I can feel that and I think that’s important for me is to make really personal work. And the more personal and more specific that work is the more people can find themselves in that work. It’s funny because sort of counterintuitive. You think, if my work is so specific about this one little experience that I’m having, no one else will relate to it. But actually, it’s sort of quite the opposite.
Because it’s so personal, people know what that feels like on a human level. So yeah, the scarier the work gets, the more reward there is in that and the more people can connect to it. So that’s what that is.
Part of my fear is that people might know my work from doing Brisbane Festival four times in Scott’s shows and in Strut & Fret shows and Blanc throughout Australia so many times. That’s why I’m a little afraid. That comedy is still there but people might be a little bit surprised that they might feel something different than a laugh a minute
What I love about Blanc so much is that, like Blanc & Strut shows they offer an escape to people going through something that can be really challenging. Blanc offers a sanctuary for you to just be free and not think about the outside world for a second, not think about what’s going on. And I love that. And there’s such an important place, but I think that Chatter is a bit more confronting. We are going to think about what’s happening outside and inside, and everywhere through the digestive tract.
The blurb for Chatter, on Brisbane Festival website, specifically mentions eight hour enemas. And you mentioned the autoimmune in this interview. So I put two and two together. For people that are worried about the eight hour enema reference, what would you say to them?.
I say that not to worry about 8 hour enemas. That blurb is pretty intense. An eight hour enema is some pretty intense language to use in the blurb. The show is not eight hours long. So, if you think about it contextually, it’s a reference in a list of references.
It could be my warped mind honing in on it.
Or my warped mind putting it in there?! Like you said when you read it, you’re wondering if this is going to make me anxious? Then, I think a lot of other people might read that blurb and think it’s funnier than maybe it is. There’s this whole line and then also there’s the world in which, I also really love playing with is “is this funny?” “Is this serious?” “Where are we on this?”
An eight hour enema is very funny, and it’s also intense and also horrible to live through. There’s both sides of it. And I think playing with that duality of it’s really important for me, and also how I’ve managed to navigate through this illness is with comedy. So, there’s that. The quick shifts between feeling this is the worst moment of my life, and then pulling the camera out and being like, I can’t believe I have to do this. There’s both sides to it. And I think that’s really that’s really helped me. I can’t speak for anybody else, but I can speak for myself. I can say that approaching these really traumatic experiences with comedy and with lightness has really helped me get through this stuff.
Going back to that other thing, which I don’t talk about in the show at all really, but the idea of taking advice from somebody who’s pregnant is insane. Like looking back on that has brought such lightness to one of the worst moments of my life, you know?
It would have been really scary.
Yeah, very, very scary.
Is there a message you’re hoping audiences will take away from the show Chatter? You have kind of touched on it a little.
A little. I think about it a lot. Like I said in the past, I’ve had some audience members come up to me that have been going through their own illness, or not even illness or injury, but any sort of sort of challenge. And they’ve come to a re-evaluation. And my hope is that this project helps bring some clarity. That’s what my hope is for the project: I want it to serve.
A lot about it is my decision to continue performing. That’s a big part of it, and you’re watching me do perform while I’m talking about this work in an interesting way. It sort of shows what is happening in real time in some capacity. I’ve had some people come up to me going through injury, and it’s one of the reasons why I want to keep doing this show actually, because people came up to me and they said, “I really needed to see this”.
I think maybe it brought a little bit of clarity to a journey that they’re going on. And that’s the most that I can hope for, is that people watch it and reevaluate and let it resonate, and maybe it pushes them to continue with something that they’re really passionate about. Or maybe it pushes them to decide “that was a part of me, and it’s not all of me. I want to do something else that I can manage doing”.
I know we’ve really been talking about the serious nature of the show but I think there’s also still a part of Spencer from Blanc, you know. There is still the fun, where you’re wondering “Oh my God. Like what’s going to happen next?” “Oh I can’t believe he’s doing this right now in front of everybody. Don’t get close to me, please.” There’s still the fun experience of it that exists. I’m very careful to not be like “it’s only if you’re going through an issue.” It’s actually a fun experience as well.
Why should people come and see the show?
If I was putting on the producer hat, I would say that this because this show is so uniquely me, there’s nothing like this anywhere else because it is me. I feel like you will not have seen anything like this show before. And as much as it can be like a powerful night out, it’s also a very fun and crazy night out. And I think that duality is something worth coming to. I hope.
I’m sure it is. And we have covered a lot of ground. But is there anything else that you wanted to add that we haven’t covered anything else.
I would just love people to come see it. It’s very personal. I think it’s really going to be a fun, and hopefully touching, night out.
Are you planning on touring it around Australia after Brisbane?
After Brisbane, there are no plans right now to do it but I’d love to, you know, if there’s the right venue for it. You know, it’s a little bit different than a Fringe crowd, I would say. It’s not like 100% in like a fringe world, so I have to sort of see. But I’d love to tour it more. But like I said, every time I reassess, “do I want to keep doing this?” So, we’ll see how it goes.
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We thank Spencer Novich for this interview and hope to see Chatter if it tours.
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KEY INFO ABOUT CHATTER
WHAT: Spencer Novich’s show Chatter at Brisbane Festival 2026
WHERE: The West End Electric, BRISBANE
WHEN: 23 – 27 September 2025
HOW: Purchase your tickets via this link
HOW MUCH: Ticket prices are as follows:
- General – $54
- Concession – $39
MORE BRISBANE FESTIVAL CONTENT
You may also like to read our interview with Véronique Serret who is presenting her show Migrating Bird at Brisbane Festival 2025.
