Scout Boxall: Buck Wild

AN ABSURDIST PEEK INTO A BIPOLAR BRAIN.

Scout Boxall’s always been built differently. Following a dynamite debut at Melbourne International Comedy Festival last year, 2021 Best Newcomer Nominee Scout is bringing their trademark manic energy back to the festival with their new production Buck Wild.

Blending stand up, sketch and storytelling, Buck Wild invites audiences to experience the exhilarating highs and devastating lows of bipolar, which Scout was diagnosed with at 18 years of age. This daring show deftly treads the boundary between theatre and comedy, underscored with an immersive original soundtrack of electro pop. It is cerebral chaos that veers between the poetic, the absurd and the darkly funny. It’s what you’d get if Maria Bamford and Sarah Kendall had a love child.

Buck Wild is directed by festival favourite Michelle Brasier, whose critically acclaimed solo show Average Bear won Directors Choice at the Sydney Comedy Festival. Scout is a recipient of a 2022 Moosehead Award, which aims to fund new work and help comedians to collaborate and stretch their creative legs.

This new production presents a dramatic departure from Scout’s debut show Good Egg, which enjoyed sold out seasons at Melbourne Fringe and Melbourne International Comedy Festival and received multiple awards including Best Emerging Artist (Melbourne Fringe Festival, 2019).

“My last show was all about taking different aspects of my experience and making caricatures of them,” Scout explains. “Buck Wild is a very personal and vulnerable show. It’s really about presenting all the parts as a whole, instead of abstracting them into characters.”

Although it tackles sensitive content, Buck Wild isn’t designed to confront or elicit sympathy. It is an honest invitation to take a peek inside Scout’s glitching, shimmering, elastic brain. “Bipolar disorder is heavily stigmatised,” says Scout, “but this show isn’t an educational rebuttal to that. It’s not Healthy Harold, it’s just my personal experience of being incredibly hot and smart and successful, even if I’m a bit mentally cooked from time to time.”

Dates: 30 March – 10 April (no shows Monday)
Tickets: $18 – $26

Relaxed Performance - 6 April
Livestreamed Performance -10 April