From an early age, Michelle Pearson knew she loved singing. But as she grew to realise that her dreams of being the next Mariah Carey might not be as attainable as she once hoped, she started to feel she didn’t really fit.
Instead, she followed a career in public relations until a cabaret masterclass by local legend Catherine Campbell opened her eyes to a type of performance Pearson had never previously considered.
“I remember thinking, ‘oh wow cabaret feels really comfortable for me’,” Pearson says.
“It was kind of breaking down that fourth wall of theatre of being on stage and not having any connection to the audience.”
Now a cabaret artist herself, Pearson has been performing solo shows since 2013. The major success of her Comfort Food Cabaret after it premiered at the Adelaide Fringe in 2017 opened doors that have enabled Pearson to now commit to cabaret full-time.
She continues to tour around the world and also returns to Adelaide this season, as well as her newer “more accessible” show that celebrates Aussie anthems.
Pearson says her award-winning show Down Under: the songs that shaped Australia, which is also on this year’s program, is “a real show for boomers”. Celebrating classic Aussie rock, the show has just come off a successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe where it won the House of Oz Purse Prize and the Fringe World 2024 Best Music Performance.
While Pearson has racked up an impressive portfolio of smash-hit shows and awards to match, her new show Skinny is her “greatest achievement”, that is, she says, “besides my son!”
After receiving the Frank Ford Commission – a $20,000 annual grant for the commissioning of new work by South Australian cabaret artists – in 2024, Pearson debuted Skinny at last year’s Adelaide Cabaret Festival.
“It’s a really special show to me… and it’s a really personal story,” Pearson says.
“But it’s one I had kind of wanted to share for a really long time and it’s been really healing to do it.”
Inspired by her own long, tumultuous relationship with her body image, Skinny centres around Pearson’s first-hand experience and the lengths we might be willing to go to, to look skinny.
“The show really circulates around growing up and being constantly told there’s something wrong with my body,” she says.
“One thing that really struck me after performing it [at the Cabaret Festival] is the amount of people just reaching out to me who were very moved by it.
“I guess the crux of the show is very much about the extraordinary and cruel things we do to our bodies and minds to be skinny.”
Despite the show’s vulnerable message Pearson says it is also lighthearted.
“It’s not all heavy, it is quite funny and there’s some great music in it,” she says.
“But it does portray a story that is very personal to me. It’s very different from anything I usually do.”
Michelle Pearson: Skinny, Gluttony, until 23 February