Abby Howells is an extraordinary talent. A multiple-award-winning stand-up comedian and playwright (with a PhD in Theatre Studies) Abby has been entertaining audiences in ANZ, Asia and the UK for over a decade.

In July 2024 Abby returns to Melbourne with her Billy T Award-winning show La Soupco as part of Replay Festival. Written by Abby when she was 11 and performed by Abby now aged 33, La Soupco is a beguiling tale of love, loss, nautical trauma and deeply undiagnosed Autism. Despite being set in the wake of World War II, World War II, no historical research, verification or corroboration has been undertaken!

For tickets and info visit https://comedy.com.au/news/replay-festival-announced/

Abby’s first love is musical theatre but when cast in a pantomime of Red Riding Hood she discovered other people thought she was actually quite funny. So Abby got a haircut, hit the open mic scene in Aotearoa and, at the age of 20, discovered stand-up comedy was the thing she wanted to do in life. However, the upward trajectory of her early career was abruptly derailed when she was sexually harassed on stage in front of an audience including her parents.

Abby then co-founded, and became Head Writer for, the New Zealand female comedy collective Discharge where she wrote and performed in three shows; W​hat is this? Women’s Hour? (2012),​ ​Benedict Cumberbatch Must Die (which won the 2014 Highly Commended Award in Playmarket’s b425 Competition), and an educational musical, ​28 Days: A Period Piece​ (2015) which toured schools throughout Aotearoa.

 In 2014 Abby’s screenplay, Standing Up, written as part of her MA in Scriptwriting (Victoria University’s prestigious International Institute of Modern Letters), won the Brad McGann Award for Film Writing.

Abby’s other writing credits include an audio play, The Crash (2015), released by Radio New Zealand; Crossbow Cat (2014), performed at Short and Sweet Festivals across Aotearoa, Asia, and Australia where it won both the Auckland Festival’s People’s Choice and Judges’ Choice Awards; Attila the Hun (2017), performed as part of the Young and Hungry Festival and Dunedin Arts Festivals (NZ); and White Men (2018), performed at BATS Theatre and Dunedin Fringe Festival.

In 2019 Abby returned to stand-up touring her acclaimed second solo show HarleQueen, a celebration of trailblazing female comedians told through the prism of Abby’s own personal comedy journey. It swept the pool of comedy awards winning the NZ International Comedy Festival’s Directors’ Award; the Wellington Theatre Awards’ Peter Harcourt New Playwright of the Year, and Adelaide Fringe Festivals’ Best Comedy, Week Four and Emerging Artist, and New Zealand Fringe Festival’s Tour Ready Award.

Since then, Abby has been awarded a PhD in theatre studies for her thesis exploring how incarcerated women are portrayed in film and television; written and performed her third solo show La SoupCo, which won the 2023 New Zealand International Comedy Festival’s Billy T Award and received a 5-star review in The Age at the 2024 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Abby has also collaborated and performed with Angella Dravid in The Improfessionals at the 2024 New Zealand International Comedy Festival.

Abby’s acting credits include roles in the popular long-running NZ TV serial Shortland Street (2023) and in the film The Royal Treatment (2021); as well as on stage in the plays The Bald Soprano (2019), Fold (2018), My Dad’s Boy (2017) and Beards! Beards! Beards! (2016) about a girl trying to grow a beard which toured New Zealand and the UK, including Edinburgh Fringe.

 Abby can be heard as a presenter on RNZ’s smash hit comedy/history/conspiracy podcast Did Titanic Sink (for which she directed Season 2), as a guest on RNZ’s Bookmarks, Fast Favourites, and The Wireless: Live from the Watercooler; as well as various podcasts such as Backyard Stories with Claudia Nankervis and The Worst Idea of All Time with Guy Montgomery and Tim Batt. She often appears as a panellist on NZ TV shows such as 7 Days, Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont-Spelling Bee; and she has also been a guest on Comedians Giving Lectures (NZ) and The Project (NZ).

Abby talks openly about being on the Autism spectrum and her special interests include The Titanic and the original Baby-Sitters Club books. Her perfect day involves reading a book while drinking tea on a train.

“I’m just a weirdo doing weird and funny jokes, and people like it! They really feel it. I’ve had so much heartening feedback from people who felt seen and heard by my story, from so many different industries – it’s the shared experience of finding your place in the world you love.”