Ruby Wax became the self-described “poster girl for mental illness” nearly a decade ago, when posters for British charity Comic Relief appeared in Underground stations across London saying “one in four people have mental illness, one in five people have dandruff. I have both.” From there, Wax wrote a hugely popular show about the at-times debilitating depression that she had suffered from in silence for most of her life. Since then, she has worked as a mental health campaigner and gained a master’s degree in in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy from Oxford University.
But Wax is quick to mention that her new show, Frazzled, is not about mental illness. “I’m talking about the human condition," she tells Time Out. "How we’re living now. We should having the time of our lives, but we’re frazzled. It’s not stress, because we need stress. It’s the thinking about stress.”
Frazzled is based on her 2016 book, A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled, which offers a way out of the modern condition of ‘frazzle’ with a six-week course in mindfulness based on her Oxford studies.
See all of Time Out's top picks for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.