Zoë Coombs-Marr

Zoë Coombs Marr is a performer, writer, and one of Australia’s most impressive and accomplished comedians. She first took to the mic when she was 15, and has since performed extensively across Australia and internationally, winning critical acclaim and multiple awards.

Zoë is the creator, writer and host of Queerstralia – a fascinating look into the untold LGBTQIA+ history of Australia, available to stream on ABC iView. Queerstralia won Best History Program at The World Congress of Science & Factual producers and The Australian Editors Guild award for Best Editing in non-fiction TV. It was nominated for the Diversify TV Award at MIPCOM Cannes and Best Documentary, Best Editing, and Best Direction in Nonfiction Television at the 2024 AACTA Awards.

Her live show Every Single Thing in My Whole Entire Life – debuted to Australian audiences in 2024 and played to delighted houses in Melbourne, Edinburgh, London, New York, LA’s Netflix Is A Joke and most recently the Mumbai Comedy Festival. Every Single Thing In My Whole Entire Life is nothing fancy, no big concepts, just a simple stand up show covering every single thing in Zoe’s whole entire life. Classic Coombs Marr. This year’s festival offering, The Splash Zone, asks audiences to strap in to experience the rich human tapestry that binds us all together aka chats (or the conversations, goss, speaking, clamming and shutting up, and getting your numerology done by an uber driver.)

Zoë’s show Trigger Warning was the must-see comedy phenomenon of 2016, winning the Melbourne Comedy Festival Award as well as the Golden Gibbo, two Green Room Awards and nominations for Best Show at the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, a Helpmann and the 2017 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Drama. Turns out you can make intersectional feminism funny.

Here’s the thing though: until 2018 Zoë most frequently appeared in comedy circles (including in Trigger Warning) as Dave, a retrograde male comedian with a neckbeard. That year she (re-)appeared as herself, sans Dave’s neckbeard, with her hit festival offering Bossy Bottom. The show saw Zoë nominated for Best Comedy Performer at the Helpmann Awards and won her a prestigious Herald Angel Award in Edinburgh. In 2020 Bossy Bottom was filmed and internationally released on Amazon Prime Video.

In 2021 she became a contributor to The Weekly with Charlie Pickering, hiding out in the crawlspace of the ABC with Barrie Cassidy and flying off on a broom as part of her regular Week In Work segment, and has regularly appeared as a panellist on Australian screens for the last decade in shows such as: Would I Lie To You?, Guy Montgomery’s Spelling Bee, Thank God You’re Here, Dirty Laundry Live, How Not To Behave, The Chaser’s Media Circus, Spicks & Specks, and Question Everything, amongst others.

Zoë has written and performed for scripted television including: Black Comedy, Rosehaven, Get Krack!n, The Letdown and her stand-up comedy has featured on Harry Hill’s Clubnite, The Stand Up Show with Jon Dore (CTV), The Melbourne Comedy Festival Gala, JFL Australia, The Hannah Gadsby Gala, JFL Montreal, Comedy Next Gen and Comedy Up Late, to name a few.

As a writer and theatre maker, Zoë’s work has been critically acclaimed internationally across multiple genres. She has written, directed and starred in productions at world-class venues including The Sydney Opera House, The Melbourne Arts Centre (AUS) Soho Theatre and Traverse Theatre (UK). In 2012, her solo theatre/comedy work And That Was The Summer That Changed My Life was awarded the Philip Parsons Young Playwright Award and nominated for Best Newcomer at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

In 2014, her five-woman ensemble play Is This Thing On? was presented at Belvoir Theatre and won a Sydney Theatre Award for Best Ensemble and a nomination for Best New Australian Work. In 2017, her theatrical collaboration with Ursula Martinez and Adrienne Truscott, Wild Bore, premiered at the Malthouse Theatre and went on to be performed at the Soho Theatre, Edinburgh Fringe and the Skirball Centre at NYU.

She is one-third of the contemporary performance company POST, whose work has been translated into multiple languages, and has been presented at venues spanning from Sydney Theatre Company to European Arts Festivals, GAM Santiago and Hong Kong’s International Black Box Theatre Festival.

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★★★★★ The Age 

“Mind-melting in the very best way.”
★★★★ Time Out 2023

“A master-class in meta humour.”
★★★★★ The Herald (UK)

“Deliriously funny… Stand-up at its subversive best.”
★★★★ Evening Standard (UK)

“Thunderously funny…”
★★★★★ Shadows on the Wall (UK) 2023

“Perfectly-pitched”
★★★★ The Scotsman 2023

“Coombs Marr is at the top of her game.”
★★★★ Arts Hub

“One of the sharpest brains on the comedy circuit.”
Australian Stage 2023

“An escalating spiral of metafictional hilarity… Catch this masterful tour de force while you can.”
★★★★★ Broadway Baby

“Punky and genuinely original.”
★★★★★ Mirror

“A cascade of ideas, jokes and images that leaves you head spinning and your heart laughing. This is daring, high-wire comedy at its best.”
★★★★★ Chortle

★★★★★ Ed Fest Magazine

“Off-the-charts, wet-your-pants brilliant. Zoe Coombs Marr is a genius.”
★★★★1/2 Herald Sun

“Quite remarkable”
★★★★ Guardian