Joining the Sam Steen Show on RTL Today Radio ahead of tonight's opening performance, Gildea explained that while her previous hit show, How to Get the Menopause and Enjoy It, focused on one particular stage of life, the new production casts its net much wider.
"It's a follow-on from the last show," she said. "This one is about the changes that have happened for women over the last five decades. It's particularly coming from an Irish context, an Irish-UK context, but it's relevant to everybody... and it's funny!"
The show begins by reflecting on Gildea's mother's generation and how dramatically expectations of women have shifted in just a few decades.
"I was just thinking how things have changed so radically since she was born," she explained. "The options she had, then my generation, and now the generation coming up, their whole worldview is entirely different."
Using television as a nostalgic lens, Gildea explores everything from the advertising of the 1960s and 70s to the changing role of women in society, before branching out into music, pop culture and plenty of relatable observations.
"I see it all through the prism of television because I'm Generation X," she laughed. "We look at the domestication of women in the '60s and '70s and how they've broken away from that."
While the show tackles social change and cultural history, Gildea insists audiences shouldn't mistake it for a lecture.
"My producer's job is to tell everybody it's funny," she joked. "It makes people laugh."
As listeners soon discovered during the interview, the show even includes an explanation, and demonstration, of twerking, prompting plenty of laughter in the studio.
After more than 30 years in comedy, including her time with groundbreaking Irish musical comedy group The Nualas, Gildea says the live audience remains at the heart of everything she does.
Although she now shares clips online and has recently launched a YouTube channel featuring recordings from her previous show, she says nothing compares to performing in front of a crowd.
"I come from a generation where it was all about the live work," she said. "Cycling around putting up posters and getting people into theatres. That's still what's foremost for me."
She added that some of the best moments in the show weren't even planned.
"We found this show suddenly had a sing-along element that was never intended," she laughed. "You have women singing old television commercials from 1971. We never expected that."
Further Adventures in Womaning comes to the Centre Culturel Neudorf for two performances:
Thursday July 3rd – 7:30pm
Friday July 4th – 7:30pm
Tickets are available via the New World Theatre Club (NWTC), with limited availability remaining.
You can also listen back to Anne Gildea's full interview on the Sam Steen Show below.
