Hannah Gadsby Hasn't Quit Comedy: New Show Douglas Will Tour U.S.

During her incendiary Netflix special Nanette, Australian comic Hannah Gadsby announced she was quitting comedy. In the months since the special aired last summer, Gadsby, who addressed homophobia, sexual assault, and the tendency of people to forgive bad men for their "great" art, has skyrocketed to fame in the United States. Now she's revealed that she's taking a new comedy show, Douglas (named after her dog), on tour.

The new comedy show is Gadsby's 11th, and it will focus on her rise to fame and what she's learned since Nanette was released. The new show will premiere in Melbourne March 12 and move to the United States in late April, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Douglas will land in U.S. cities including San Diego, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Portland, Ore.

Gadsby, whose book Ten Steps to Nanette will drop later this year, spoke with THR about her decision to return to the stage after she famously said she was done.

"My whole life and world has changed, so there's no real reason to change absolutely everything. There's a certain amount of comfort in going back on stage in an environment that I'm somewhat familiar with -- although it's my first U.S. tour," Gadsby said. "It's still new. After what I did with Nanette, I'm not going backwards; I'm going to keep pushing forwards -- and probably upsetting some comedy purists again. We can't please everyone!"

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The comic, who hails from Tasmania, has been shaking things up in Los Angeles since she broke out with Nanette.

At the Hollywood Reporter Women in Entertainment breakfast in early December, she woke up the crowd by slamming "good men" who are complicit in sexual misconduct.

Later in December she appeared in an all-female, mostly queer reading of Casablanca with Ellen Page, Kiersey Clemons, Indya Moore, Katherine Moennig, Emily Hampshire, and Olivia Wilde.

Gadsby broke with her usual protocol in Nanette by ending the show with the deadly serious, timely issue of sexual assault, and she told THR that Douglas will be topical as well as funny.

"I start serious and before Nanette, I'd always finish funny. But with Nanette, I flipped that. With this show, the humor will be back in," Gadsby said. "I think that's an interesting thing, as far as a lot of people in the U.S. are concerned, Nanette was the only way that people know me and so that's the only prism that they view my work."

Regarding the shocking turn Nanette takes, she told The Advocate last summer, "I didn't do it lightly. I really did break the contract with my audience. To be facetious, I think I can be proud that I've been able to shock them and pique this attention. That's very hard to do in this day and age."