“I wear hearing aids in my ears. My parents actually gave them to me for my birthday and that, I think, is not right,” Lara Ricote says to a room full of laughter.
“If you had the hearing aids before, don’t wait. Hand them over as soon as you got them … don’t wait ‘till my birthday.”
That’s part of Ricote’s stand-up comedy routine that has made her a rising star internationally.
After starting out just a few years ago, she won the UK's influential Funny Women Stage Award in 2021, and in 2022 was named Best Newcomer at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the world’s largest performing arts event.
The 26-year-old is “equal halves Mexican, American, and Venezuelan” and previously said she believed there was some “tokenism” in her winning awards because she is a Latin-American woman with degenerative hearing loss.
She clarifies though, that she is “incredibly grateful” for the accolades.
Lara Ricote winning best newcomer at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards in August 2022. Source: Getty / Euan Cherry
“I want to be able to call out the cynicism while still being very thankful that it exists.”
Ricote notes she may be considered a more ‘acceptable face’ of minority representation because she’s a woman of colour but can ‘pass’ as white, and her disability is not as pronounced as some.
“I’m in this in-between space because I’m hard of hearing, but I can still function in society without people making too many adjustments for me to be around,” she says.
“I think it’s important that we give platforms to people whose voices we’ve never heard before, but I also think it’s interesting to notice that we’re doing it this particular way.”
She’s now brought her show, GRL/LATINX/DEF, to Australia for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
Before comedy, Ricote was studying political science in Amsterdam and aspired to a career in diplomacy (she campaigned for Bernie Sanders at one point), but performing was in her blood.
The daughter of singer and actor Gaby Rivero, she studied acting as a child and was introduced to comedy by her sister, who is also hard of hearing.
Ricote says she soon found she preferred comedy to theatre as she could say whatever she liked, which felt “very liberating”.
She performs in both Spanish and English and says the industry has largely welcomed her as a deaf performer.
“I haven’t found any resistance from anywhere … People are generally very nice.”
She says she can’t always hear when people interject from the audience but has a range of prepared responses to shoot down any hecklers.
Ricote says she's prepared for hecklers. Credit: Steve Ullathorne
“That was so exciting, probably the time I had the most people who were deaf or hard of hearing at the show,” she says.
“It was very heartwarming to do it with captions.”
Ricote says some of the audience members hadn’t attended live comedy before but are now keen to see other captioned shows.
“If I could be, in some way, opening a door for anyone to be able to see shows they otherwise not be able to see, I would love to be able to do that because I would love it if someone were doing that for me.”
Rebecca Adam, CEO of advocacy group Expression Australia, says representation in the creative industries is essential for people who are Deaf and hard of hearing.
“It allows them to see similar people – much like role modelling. It also reminds them that they’re not alone and that there are people like them out there.”
The organisation says one in six Australians have some degree of hearing loss, and that will increase to one in four by 2050 as the population ages.
Melbourne International Comedy Festival director Susan Provan says the festival is committed to diversity.
“We strive for accessibility – for both audiences and artists – and we will always encourage new ideas, new opinions and new conversations.”
“Lara Ricote is an exciting new comedy voice reflecting a life experience that will be new for a majority of Australian audiences but certainly familiar to Australians who share her experience of disability.”
Ricote says when starting out she was inspired by English comedian Josie Long, whose work showed her a way to “talk about the things you care about … and make them insanely funny and tender”.
So while Ricote’s comedy offers her experiences and perspective as a deaf woman, she’s also keen to tackle broader political issues, including the climate crisis.
There's just one problem. It’s “insanely difficult” to make climate change funny, she says.
“We have no time to adjust to this tragedy we’re living, so that makes it inherently unfunny … I’ve not figured it out yet.”
In the meantime, she’s working on a television series pilot “about me and my sister, being hard of hearing, being Latina, and feeling like a fish out of water in every situation”.
And at times she’s marvelling at how quickly her life has changed since taking up comedy.
“This wasn’t even my dream because I didn’t think it was possible.”
Lara Ricote’s GRL/LATNX/DEF is showing at The Westin Three until 23 April as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Some sessions are Auslan interpreted.
Daniel Herborn is a freelance writer based in Sydney
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