Stand-up comedy is a difficult industry to crack, but that didn’t faze 25-year-old Laura Johnston, who quit her job as a tour guide at the Royal Australian Mint before she had even got on stage to try it out.

It was a risky move, but it paid off, with Laura having just performed her show, That’s… Brave, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. 

Not only that, the show, which is a mix of sketch comedy, stand-up comedy and musical comedy, was listed in Theatre Village’s This Year’s Top Picks for Edinburgh Fringe 2024 list.

“I had experience in sketch comedy, because I’d done sketch comedy at uni, but I was just convinced that I needed to do stand-up comedy, and I wasn’t going to do it if I was still comfortable in life, if that makes sense,” she says.

“I was just so sure that this is what I wanted to do. 

“The very first gig that I did was at the Polish Club, which doesn’t do comedy any more, and immediately after doing the gig, I cried. 

“That was two and a half years ago.”

Laura says the Edinburgh Fringe Festival has been an incredible experience, explaining that in Canberra it normally takes her roughly a month to get an hour of stage time, whereas in Edinburgh, she got 19 months worth.

“I loved the experience, and I learned so much from doing the show so many times back to back that I actually wrote a second show, and for the final three nights of the festival, I did an entirely new second show called Why Not?”

Laura, who grew up in Canberra says the city has actually been remarkably influential on her comedy. 

“There’s this quote that I like, but I can’t attribute [it], I don’t know who said it, that apparently Kitty Flanagan likes to test out her stuff in Canberra, because it’s the hardest audience, and if it works in Canberra, then your material is going to work anywhere in Australia,” Laura says.

“So it’s been really interesting taking material from Canberra and then trying it in other places in Australia, and so far it actually has been my experience. 

“But Canberra’s a bit strange, because your audiences are often young APS workers, whereas APS jokes don’t actually go down as well in Melbourne, Sydney or Wagga Wagga.

“One of my favourite things to do is to check where they voted in the last national election, because that can give you just a hint as to what type of things to joke about and maybe what things not to joke about.”

However, Laura says the male-dominated industry was difficult to adjust to at first.

“It is still a male-dominated scene, and that was a lot worse when I first started out, and it was a bit of a shock as well,” she says.

“My very first gig at the Polish Club, backstage, one of the first things that I was asked was which of the men I was going to sleep with, and as a just-starting-out comedian, that was a bit of a shock. 

“But now that I’m mates with the comedians and there’s a stronger female presence, it’s a much more lovely experience.

“The Canberra comedy scene is gorgeous, I’m actually really glad and lucky that that’s where I’ve started because it’s a small scene, which means that you see the same comedians at all of the gigs, and so they’ve become fast friends.”

Laura says she has absolutely no regrets about quitting her tour guide job, and that pursuing comedy has fundamentally changed the way she looks at life.

“I’ve taken a bit of an academic approach to comedy, where I’ll be counting syllables of jokes, and I’ll be working out rhyming words,” she says. 

“So it means that when I’m going through life now, my brain immediately takes something and goes, can I turn this into a joke? What do I like about this?

“My attitude is so much more positive, because I’m suddenly focused on all the things that make me laugh.”

Laura will perform That’s… Brave (Edinburgh Fringe edition) on October 10, as part of the LOL Season at the Canberra Theatre Centre.