CHRIS Ryan is a 46-year-old mother of teenagers and there aren’t a lot of them in comedy, she thinks. 

A proud Canberra resident, Ryan will be performing her newest show, “I Thought It Would Be Nice”, as part of the Canberra Comedy Festival, running from March 16-22. 

Honesty is her stock-in-trade as she deals with subjects like having kids, postnatal depression and generally “how rubbish life can be”.

Ryan, one of the hottest comedians on the national circuit, won Best Newcomer Award at the 2019 Sydney Comedy Festival and opened for international comedians Ronny Chieng and Demetri Martin at the Canberra Theatre during winter. 

Even more exciting, she was recently whisked away in a Hercules to perform comedy for Australian troops stationed in Iraq at a base about 40km outside Baghdad. 

Ryan is busy. She’s been touring NSW, Queensland, the NT and Tasmania as part of the Sydney Comedy Festival Showcase and is just back from the Brisbane Comedy Festival. After a stint here, she’ll be heading for the big festival in Melbourne, then in May for both the Perth and Sydney comedy festivals.

You might call her a newcomer, since she started in the “Raw Comedy” competition in 2012, aged 38, but she’s been making up for lost time, having performed multiple times in the Canberra Comedy Festival and Fearless Comedy galas, doing sets at TEDxCanberra and Floriade Nightfest, and MC-ing around town.

But every comedian needs time to store up life’s experiences and she’s done that through her work as a suburban mum, a journalist for Rural Press and AAP and as a publicist with her own communications business for 20 years, only going full time in October 2018.

“When you start out in comedy, you’re not likely to do it full time,” Ryan tells us, “with part-time occasional appearances in gigs at Civic Pub, comedy festivals and open mic performances… I had family obligations, so I just did Canberra, and I like to run my own room.”

That worked well. She did the Tuggeranong Arts Centre’s comedy room, opened up comedy at the Polit Bar in Manuka and, with Mel Fernandez, ran a monthly comedy room “Beyond Comedy” in Weston Creek.

“I guess I’ve always been a bit of a clown, with a desire to make people laugh,” Ryan says. “I did debating at Canberra High, but essentially I’m a suburban white middle-aged mum.”

Not all that suburban, though. Having been raised in India where her father was stationed from age three months to nine, and then again when she was aged 17, she knows the wider world.

The title of her show “I Thought It Would Be Nice”, immediately suggests the endless comic possibilities of speculating on “what if”.

“It’s a saying my mum uses to cover bad ideas,” she explains, “and it underlines how out of control people are feeling. You’re not meant to tell the truth.

“I reject all the things I’m supposed to be. You’re supposed to engage in adult behaviour, but we’re often incapable and during this past summer I’ve also been disoriented and terrified. 

“People in my circle work so hard, yet there’s a lot of anxiety out there, especially among mums, so in my comedy sketches I say, “you’ll be alright.”

“I Thought It Would Be Nice”, Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre, 7pm, March 20-21, bookings and all Canberra Comedy Festival program details at canberracomedyfestival.com.au