If Mary Coustas looks like she wants to wrap Canberra up in a great big hug - she does.
The comedian, writer and actor is in the national capital to perform her one-woman show This is Personal on Friday and Saturday night in The Playhouse at the Canberra Theatre Centre.
The creative who brought to life comedy icon Effie is now presenting herself on stage, in a performance that has been lauded at once hilarious and moving.
"I don't want to sound American by saying, 'I'm in the capital', but "I'm in the capital!"," she said, with a laugh.
"[Daughter] Jamie is coming [today] after school and they're going to do the art gallery and all that. And there's some key people I love that I'm going to see and who are seeing the show, so I'm super-excited."
It's her first performance as herself in Canberra and in The Playhouse theatre, rather than as Effie.
This is Personal is less a telling of her life - although all the important people in her life are there - and more an experience for the audience to savour, finding some universal truths in it all.
And Mary never tires of performing the play.
"You become a little addicted to doing the show every night," she said.
"Because it changes, it shifts, it's a living, breathing thing."
The one-woman performance covers everything from life as a young girl in Melbourne to her monumental struggle to have a child, including the loss of her first daughter Stevie, who was born stillborn. And then the wonderous arrival of Jamie.
Coustas says laughter, ultimately, saved her from the tendrils of grief.
"When I talk about my fertility journey which is doesn't monopolise the show, it's an aspect of it, when my daughter was finally born, I say 'My heart got stretch marks, not just my thighs'," she said.
"I could never have imagined the magnificence of what would arrive, especially as a I knew the cost for me and the effort. I could have given up a million times and I thank God I didn't.
"But, you know, heavy things happen to everyone. One of the philosophies of the show is, 'You've got to find the funny, because without it, you're screwed'.
"And I just thank God I was born with a sense of humour and was around so many people when I was growing up who I thought was hilarious. And I was able to find laughter to carbonate the really heavy things I was dealt at various points of my life.
"I could have turned to a bottle or a drug or become bitter but laughter was the thing that aerated it. It let oxygen in and allowed that pain and grief, for a moment, to have some relief."
And she believes the show has changed her, bringing an extra dimension to her life.
"I think as we get older it's important to continue to take risks," she said.
"Emotionally keep extending ourselves because we can get very stagnant in life. If we make the most conservative choice all the time, we start to shrink, I think.
"For me, this show, I really had to dig deep. It's almost like when I wrote my memoir, it's out of my heart and my life and you release it into the public.
"And then when I perform this show, that's how I feel. It stops being mine, and it starts being a shared thing."
- Mary Coustas - This is Personal is at The Playhouse at The Canberra Theatre Centre tonight and tomorrow at 8pm. Tickets are here.
