On the Origin of Faeces opens with Alanta Colley’s story of deciding if she should go back to work in the infectious diseases system or follow her passion of comedy. When she made this choice in early 2020, comedy was genuinely offering her more options because there wasn’t much infectious diseases work in Australia, and she was developing a show about the scientific support of the health benefits of the introduction of diverse bacteria by not washing every surface and licking the occasional bin.
Oooooofff.
Fortunately, Colley knows her shit. She’s worked in public health, education and international development and has become a regular media science commentator. She’s written fascinating and delightful shows about parasites and bees and it’s impossible to leave one of her performances without waking up some dormant brain cells. She knew there was a shit show waiting to emerge from the shitshow of 2020.
Now, if you say that you don’t want to know more about excrement – who are you kidding?! Not being able to poo or not being able to stop are with some of our worst experiences.
Do you really know why poo is brown? How about, why the ancient Romans would poo together? Who had poo gods? Why is there human poo on the moon? What happens on a dark night in Uganda when a scorpion settles on the inside door handle of a steaming hot long-drop latrine?
Putting aside her glorious poo-puns and crap-facts, this is also a show about how our guts and digestive system control how we feel and think, and she explains why swallowing a faecal-transplant poo pill isn’t really gross. More of Colley in our media could wipe away so much of the ignorance shared by people who really don’t know shit.
But gut-happy comedy needs more than a dopamine-releasing sugar hit from a cocktail and some new faecal stories for dinner parties. Laughs come from truth and relatable personal stories. The connecting story of On the Origin of Faeces is about the shame of defecation and how pre-school Alanta was so eager to please that she held everything back. We’re left wanting to know more of her origin story, but there’s nothing on the nose about flushing away shame and experiencing more joy.