How stand-up comedy is helping cancer patients tell their stories

On Thursday 7 July, Rachel Berger will play host to a very different kind of comedy night at Melbourne’s Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre (aka the Peter Mac). All the participants of Stand Up For Cancer will be cancer patients from the centre. Each will complete a comedy workshop with Berger earlier that day and will draw on their personal experiences for a series of five-minute performances.

Armed with this new perspective, Berger became increasingly interested in comedy’s therapeutic possibilities. She started running small group workshops for vulnerable communities, like people living with mental health conditions or youths experiencing homelessness. The skills she’d developed in comedy clubs and festivals had an unexpected application, and the casual, confessional nature of the art form allowed people to find new ways to tell their stories, illuminate the frustrations of their experiences, and process what they were going through.