Interview with Elouise Eftos by Phoebe O’Brien and Rachel Iampolski // photos by Andrew Fraser
Elouise Eftos is a girl’s girl at heart. Over the phone, she’s warm and inviting, generous with both her time and her answers, even if she’s clearly in the thick of it. Comedy Festival season, after all, is always a little chaotic.
“My schedule has just gotten more and more hectic,” she says. “It’s crazy, but I’m like, remember this is your dream.”
Following the breakout success of her debut show Australia’s First Attractive Comedian, Elouise Eftos is back with her latest creation, Aphrodite. After a whirlwind run that saw her tour internationally and earn a Best Newcomer nomination at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (the first Australian woman to do so), Eftos isn’t slowing down. But she’s also not pretending the second act comes easy.
“It’s giving sophomore album energy,” she laughs. “That first show was everything I’d ever worked on. This is all new.”
Aphrodite is still taking shape in real time, with Eftos having only just finished touring her debut earlier this year. “If I can figure it out in front of my beautiful audience in Melbourne, that’s a reward in itself.” She’s candid about it. “I’m such a perfectionist that it’s hard for me to do this at the moment when it’s not at the level that I want, but I have to just remember it’ll get there.”
Set inside “Aphrodite’s discotheque”, a Studio 54-meets-Mount Olympus fever dream, the show blends Greek mythology with the mechanics of modern dating, sexual politics, power and vulnerability. If her debut rejected self-deprecation, Aphrodite asks what comes after.
At the centre of it all is an admission. Eftos has never experienced eros, that kind of all-consuming, passionate romantic love and she’s not alone in that. In the show, Eftos references Rita Hayworth, Hollywood’s original Love Goddess, who once said that every man she’d known had fallen in love with Gilda and awakened with her, the icon versus the woman underneath. Eftos is working in that same space, the distance between the person people project onto and the person who actually shows up.
That absence of eros becomes part of the show’s central question, whether that kind of connection still exists at all.
She describes feeling pulled between two archetypes. Aphrodite, the ancient Greek goddess of love and desire, and Athena, goddess of wisdom and war – the part of her that wants and the part that holds back.
“Everybody wants to be wanted, but nobody wants to want,” she says.
It comes through most clearly in her reflections on dating, how people act nonchalant and don’t say what they actually mean.
“I feel like we are the most disconnected we’ve ever been as a society. Everybody is so concerned with making sure they look stoic, instead of actually caring about people or communicating how they feel.”
The result, she says, is a culture that feels increasingly transactional. “People treat people like they’re disposable. There has to be something that changes. It’s grim.”
When asked what could actually make dating better, she doesn’t hesitate. “People just need to be kinder. And honest.”
The show turns to identity and expectation. Drawing on her experience as a second-generation Greek-Macedonian woman, Eftos explores the tension between tradition and independence – the pressure to be a “good girl”, to represent, to not bring shame, while still carving out a life that feels entirely your own.
“And those things don’t always align,” she says.
“I hope that ethnic women see the show and feel seen. No one really talks about this side of it… how it’s actually quite dark for us.”
Still, Aphrodite isn’t cynical. Inspired by the 1970s disco era, when people met on dance floors, the show builds to a euphoric, disco-fuelled ending where the audience ends up on their feet, moving together. Eftos refuses to let anyone stay on the sidelines.
“We can’t just go online and say ‘I hate men’ or ‘I hate women’. How is that going to help? I hope it’s a moment where we can come together again.”
It’s a big ask for a comedy show, but Eftos doesn’t shy away from the effort. “I love pushing myself,” she says.
At the Melbourne International Comedy Festival’s lip sync battles, where she’s hosted this year, she’s known for going all in. “It’s almost like I’m in a competition with myself – what can I do next that’s going to make me have fun? It’s my opportunity to do silly things.” And she means it. From channelling Sally Field’s Oscar speech to committing fully to a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader routine to a Love Island-style entrance where fifteen fellow male comedians dance alongside her in a choreographed Macarena, her lip syncs are built on total commitment.
“When people are like, ‘you try too hard’ – yeah, and you don’t. We can tell,” she laughs.
She’s being cheeky about it, but make no mistake, Elouise Eftos is someone who cares deeply about her work, her audience and getting it right. So her willingness to be unfinished in her second hour in front of people, to not wait until everything is perfect and to stay open and let people in is a big deal. It is also what she is ultimately asking of all of us, which is to not be afraid of being a work in progress.
Perhaps whether eros still exists is beside the point. The real question is whether we’re still open enough to let it find us. If there is an answer, it probably starts on the dance floor.
Show details:
Elouise Eftos
Aphrodite
Arts Centre Melbourne – The Show Room
