Gillian Cosgriff: Waitressing… and other things I do well

After little more than a year out of WAAPA’s Music Theatre Course, Gillian Cosgriff has already toured her successful cabaret show Waitressing… and other things I do well to Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane following its initial successful season at the 2011 Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Now she is playing two nights at the 2012 Melbourne Comedy Festival on April 13 & 14.

After graduating from WAAPA in 2010, this talented young singer, songwriter and pianist was runner-up in the 8th Annual Sydney Cabaret Showcase, receiving the Showcase Award.

Gillian spoke to Neil Litchfield about her show, and her approach to songwriting.

Where did the inspiration for the title, Waitressing… and other things I do well, spring from?

“The name is the best way of describing what my first year out of Uni has been like. There’s been a lot of waitressing and other jobs this year and throughout Uni.

“I graduated from WAAPA with a Music Theatre Degree, and I was waitressing right through Uni to pay my rent. I’d also had a year off after school off, so I worked a lot of different jobs.

“But it’s not all about where I’ve worked – it’s about a lot of other stuff as well.”

What led you to go with this idea for your cabaret?

“The show was always going to evolve from whatever material I had, because I knew that I wanted it to be a show of my original songs. It was sort of a matter of here I am, and I have to write this one hour show, these are the songs I have so far, what was the common link between them – and it seemed to make sense to write about what I know. So there were quite a few different potential titles, but once I settled on this one, it actually informed the way I wrote the show, which is kind of cool.

“So it’s about the first year out of Uni for me. You know pretty much what you want to do, and you’re actually qualified and you feel ready to do it, but because of the way the industry works, that’s not always the way it works.

“It’s also about relationships, and boys, and things like that, and in particular, there’s the running theme in there of friendships. Because I studied in Perth, there’s only 18 people in each year, so you become very close– you live in each other’s pockets for three years, and then you graduate and everyone spreads out all over the place. You lose that support network of like-minded people that you had so close for three years, you’re on your own and have to figure out how this whole thing works.”

So how has that whole first year out of Uni gone for you?

“I’ve had a pretty good year. It’s sort of made my whole show idea pretty redundant. It’s been nothing like what I expected – I don’t know what I expected. I’ve auditioned for all the big musicals, and been called back for a couple, but no dice. But that’s OK, because I’ve written this show, it’s gone really well so far, and I’ve had a lot of opportunities to perform it. I’m about to start this tour, and I got to record an EP of the show, which is amazing.”

You’ve performed the show at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, then in 12 Acts of Cabaret in Brisbane, but how has the tour come about?

“Through the sheer loveliness of Luckiest Productions.

“When I finished Uni at the end of 2010, we did our Showcase tour to Melbourne and Sydney, and I stayed an extra month in Sydney so I could compete in the Sydney Cabaret Showcase. I ended up coming second in that, but because the judges of the Cabaret Showcase are the cabaret festival directors, I got seen by all those people. I was asked to submit a show to the Adelaide Cabaret Festival by David and Lisa Campbell, who were the Artistic Directors. They were amazingly supportive and encouraging, and took a lot of chances with me on my show in Adelaide. They put me in a really big venue, as a complete unknown. They run a production company called Luckiest Productions with Richard Carroll, and they really wanted to put together this tour, and organized the recording of the EP. So they tour my show now, which is brilliant.”

So, while you were studying Music Theatre at WAAPA, you were also  composing your own songs.

“I had piano lessons since I was very young. I’d also worked as an accompanist for a long time, and I really love doing that. I’d started writing my own songs – horrible stuff when I was 14, but the kind of stuff I’m writing now when I was about 18. I guess I couldn’t quite see how it could be a viable thing, because they didn’t seem like pop music, but also I wasn’t interested in writing a musical at that stage, or putting together a story. I just thought they were kind of fun things.

“In Perth, outside the course for our fundraising efforts, we had acoustic nights where anyone can get up and sing anything. I got up and played my own songs and people seemed to really like it. That was the first time I went, ‘Oh, are these the sort of things that people will enjoy?’ Then when I was in second and third year at Uni they introduced a cabaret competition, presenting 15 minutes of a proposed show, and I won that in my third year. That’s when I got really interested in cabaret.

What can audiences expect when we come and see the show?

“It’s me and a piano. I’m playing all my original songs. It’s kind of like what would happen if you came over to my house for dinner and we had a few drinks, then I sat down at the piano. It’s very informal – kind of just having a chat.

“I’ve heard the comparison made, which I don’t love only because I love him so much, that it’s like a female Tim Minchin. I love him, and he’s just such a complete genius, so it’s terrifying being compared to him. So it’s me, sitting at a piano singing songs that I wrote, and most of them are funny.”

Can you take me through how you wrote one of your songs?

“One of the first songs in the show is called ‘The Job Song’. I write a lot from lists. I always have a notebook with me and I’ll keep all sorts of lists – like, in this case, all the jobs I’ve had. They just accumulate over months and months, and a lot of these kind of lists and free-form writing turn into songs. ‘The Job Song’ is probably one of the oldest songs in the show. I wrote it when I was in second year at Uni, and we did a brief section on cabaret, so this was the first time I wrote something which was for a cabaret. ‘The Job Song’ literally documents every job I’ve had, and that’s a lot.

“In this case I really had to write a song for this cabaret, so I sat down at the piano. To be honest I don’t write with a lot of purpose. I often don’t have a clear idea of what I’m going to write. Some people sit down and say, I’ll have an A section, then a B section, then an A, then a bridge. Some people work to very set formulas, but my brain doesn’t seem to work like that. So I sit down and I mess around at the piano.

I found this repeating theme that I really liked, and that runs through the whole song. Quite a few of my songs are like that, but there’s a lot of words, so sometimes it makes sense for me, writing-wise, to keep the melody and the piano part relatively simple, so that you can hear everything I’m saying.

“I sat down with that piano part, and then I had the list of the jobs, and it was literally just the list, the places, and I would have a particular anecdote in my head about each of these jobs. Literally I had lists in front of me, and I had this piano part, and I’d start singing things and writing them down if they worked. From there, once I know what I want to say, I’ll find a way to rhyme it – to find what the best rhyme’s going to be.

“I just kind of mess around and see what happens, which is not the most productive way to write – I have to be a bit more disciplined, but when it works it works really well.”

Gillian Cosgriff will perform Waitressing… and other things I do well at Chapel off Chapel in Melbourne on April 13 and 14 as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.