Lara Ricote on returning to the Fringe with INKLING

It’s sad to admit, but Lara Ricote is no longer a hidden gem. Arguably her time as one of the great acts yet to break into the mainstream was incredibly short-lived, becoming the 2021 Funny Women Stage Award winner, then winning the Fringe Best Newcomer in 2022, with its follow-up earning rave reviews. Yet now, co-starring on Sam Campbell’s hit show Make That Movie and appearing across Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping, it feels time to finally accept that Ricote is becoming a star.

From those early days at the Fringe, to her third installment, Ricote has been a fresh new voice in the circuit, playing with themes, audiences and structures in a way that is truly accessible yet wonderfully mischievous. She tinkered with crowd dynamics in her last show, Little Tiny Wet Show, naming the audience, enveloping them into relationships and coaxing them to give as much as they take. Her debut GRL/LATNX/DEF toyed with the tropes of an ‘introductory’ debut and a ‘minority’ themed hour, slipping out of categorisation. She is an artist who has as much joy in the writing, as we have in the performance. It is wonderful to see. In her latest hour, INKLING, we see something new for Ricote – honesty.

“Your first hour is a compilation of the bits you’ve acquired over your career, the second hour is establishing a theme, and then for the third I drew a blank,” Ricote reveals, with a coy smile. She talks about her attempts to force out new material – “I tried experimenting with silence for ages, thinking oh maybe I don’t say anything, but it was because I had nothing to say.”

INKLING is set around truth. It is a show that Lara herself has billed as “as honest as I can be” and until she was able to make changes in her life that allowed this, there was no show. Without spoilers, Ricote admits that once those changes were made “the whole show flooded out of me, I woke up with a new hour.”

For anyone who has seen Ricote perform, it will be no surprise to you that journalists repeat words like quirky, whimsical and excitable. The performer is a fizzing ball of energy, incorporating her giggly personality and vibrant, expressive body language to paint vivid pictures and create boundlessly endearing experiences. Yet the Ricote talking to me, while equally engaging and enthusiastic, is poised and articulate, deliberate with every response, introspective at every turn.

She talks with candour about an array of topics. Starting with her family of creatives, with an actress mother and photographer father, reminiscing: “He was a pointer, he was always pointing at something beautiful, almost forcibly open-minded.” She reflects on her disabilities and how it affects her process: “With a loss of hearing, I’m constantly looking for the millions of details I’m missing, trying to soak in the world every other way I can.”

From gender, media and consumerism, every topic touched on is done so with a restless mind, always staying open, questioning everything and offering multiple perspectives to every subject.

Lara Ricote. Credit: Wesley Verhoeve

In terms of her father, she expands that the downside of an open-minded creative, is that his questioning of everything led him to certain extremist beliefs – “if you shut out everyone who doesn't think like you, your open-mindedness becomes in itself close-minded."

In regards to her disability she says, “I ask myself if I’m detail-oriented because of the disability or if my disability has just exposed my need for details. I debate all the time, what is a coping mechanism and what is my personality?”

This ability to look at every facet of the world with curiosity and a willingness to explore, letting the forces of life educate, influence and reveal themselves encapsulates Ricote’s appeal. “Looking and knowing are different things,” she muses, touching on the teaching of Ram Das, the spiritual leader and psychologist. Talking sincerely about his teachings, turning to nature and the ‘now’ of the world. “We look at buildings and walls as these powerful figures in society, these strong unflinching monuments, and we base our existence on them, but nature doesn't have bones or bricks, it's constantly moving and evolving. We should be in motion.” She elaborates, before catching herself and chuckling “is this usable, or is this the rambles of a crazy lady?”

INKLING is rooted in who Lara Ricote is now. The freedom to say what she thinks, about anything she is thinking about. The show isn’t about asking permission to express opinions, it’s about expressing them regardless. “The show is much more than the cumulating skills I acquired from eight years of stand-up – it’s also eight more years of being a person, learning myself and the world and finally accepting both.” There’s an instant and palpable catharsis when she says this, a true sense that she is where she wants to be. The light glows out of her as she repeats like a mantra that this new show is her at her fullest, her at her happiest, her at her best.

“I always want to make a show I could not have made the year before. I’m not interested in all the ways I have been, I want to see all the ways I can be.”

From nature to philosophy, authors like Sheila Heti to movies like Amélie, Ricote is interested in artists being uncompromising and true to themselves, yet throughout the conversation it is abundantly evident that her biggest priority is community. Be this through the relationships she builds with audiences, or the friends she schedules in for four-hour phone calls weekly, conversations, communication and togetherness are what make Ricote tick.

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Lara Ricote: INKLING, Monkey Barrel Comedy (MB3), 5-30 Aug, 5.40pm