Prime Time
When Rose Matafeo won the top prize at the Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Festival in 2018, she was just the fifth woman and the only person of colour to win the award for a solo show in its 37 year-history. She was widely praised for the win, especially in New Zealand, where one of our own achieving on the international stage immediately activates our latent patriotism. But to Matafeo, instances where the praise seemed contingent on that “first” or “fifth” chafed. The comedian is ambivalent about relating her success to anything beyond her comedic capabilities.
“It’s interesting when your identity is used as a virtue signal,” she says. “[It’s] basically used at other people’s convenience depending on how people want to categorise you. When you’re a brown person, or a woman, not everything has to be about that thing.”
Matafeo is a self-described nerd who loves screwball comedies and old musicals (she recently purchased a tiny, second-hand 90s-era television with a built-in VCR so she could watch some old VHS tapes of Disney films she found in a bag on the street), and she has recounted an eclectic list of comedic influences over the years: Rock Hudson, Doris Day, Gabe Kaplan, thing”.
