Life got very different for Hannah Gadsby in the wake of Nanette: she moved to Los Angeles, she got a stylist (and a tailor), she went to the Emmys.

People (lots of people) started asking for selfies, and people — often the same people — started telling her their trauma, sometimes directly before they took the selfie.

People said things to her like "Calvin Klein wants to develop a relationship with you".

By her account — delivered on stage Thursday for the world premiere of her follow-up show, Douglas — it's been very, very odd.

Douglas Australian dates Arts Centre Melbourne: Until Apr 7

Arts Centre Melbourne: Until Apr 7 Palais Theatre Melbourne: Dec 7

Palais Theatre Melbourne: Dec 7 Theatre Royal, Hobart: Dec 11-12

Theatre Royal, Hobart: Dec 11-12 Canberra Theatre Centre: Dec 14

Canberra Theatre Centre: Dec 14 Sydney Opera House: Dec 17-21

It's a testament to our times, her talent and the state of mainstream comedy that a show that started off in the sweaty basement of the Melbourne Town Hall became a Netflix special that rocked America.

Hannah Gadsby is a star.

And taking the stage at Hamer Hall (to a home crowd's cheering), she did seem to stand taller. There was a sense of a master in their natural element.

As she tells the crowd, she did comedy by the book for over 10 years, and "I got really good." Then she got bored, frustrated, and started to feel limited — and so she re-wrote the book.

The traditional joke — set up, tension, release — that she debunked in Nanette is no longer the main tool in the kit.

Rather than being the career kiss-off its maker intended, Nanette propelled her into a different mode of comedy.

The Netflix broadcast of Nanette currently holds a 100% approval rating on the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes. ( Supplied: Netflix )

Speaking at the launch of Melbourne International Comedy Festival on Tuesday, Gadsby said: "I believe that there is a revolution about to happen in comedy, a real, big global revolution, where a joke is not the only tool in a comedian's kit."

Gadsby displays the ease of someone who finally got something very big off their chest, and is quite simply relieved.

Douglas starts off innocuously, on the topic of names: show names (Douglas, the name of her dog, turns out to be even more of a red herring than Nanette), pet names, American names for things versus Australian names for things ("Americans are like the straight white men of cultures" — not interested in yielding to anyone else's), medical names (do yourself a favour and don't look up the "Pouch of Douglas" — it's better in Gadsby's telling).

So far so whimsical.

But Gadsby doesn't do whimsy, and there's a sting in the tail of this: names have power. They are created or decided by people who hold power, and they are wielded by them to devastating effect.

"We live in a world where everything is named by men," Gadsby says, in one of many you-could-hear-a-pin-drop lines of the night.

No surprises: Douglas, like Nanette, is a forceful skewering of the heteronormative patriarchy.

Gadsby gets a lot of mileage out of showing how this has played out in art: cue a slideshow of high-Renaissance paintings, with live commentary — one of her favourite comedy formats, and one of this show's more surreally funny sections. She could do a whole hour of this. Wait, she has.

But Gadsby is ultimately less interested in the nature of the power-holders than the dynamics of power; less interested in who than how.

At the launch of Melbourne International Comedy Festival, where she got her start, Gadsby said "I feel that I am a literal sponsored child of the Festival". ( ABC Arts: Zan Wimberley )

There's a lot at stake for Gadsby when it comes to words and names.

She talks about how people tell her about her own craft (it's not stand-up, it's a monologue; or it's a lecture; but at least, she says wryly, no one's calling it a "one-woman show — what a muzzle!").

She talks about how people have described her body, and her medical conditions (there's a fight with a Doctor Dickbiscuit after he says "Don't be silly" — a line that has every woman in the audience grimacing).

She talks about how strangers and loved ones have talked about her autism, diagnosed before she wrote Nanette, but disclosed for the first time on stage in Douglas.

Gadsby's autism is a big topic in the show, and in talking about it she raises a mighty middle finger to ableism — which like heteronormativity or patriarchy responds to difference by ranking things as lesser or greater.

If Nanette celebrated the unique way in which Gadsby sees the world, then Douglas puts a name to it.

It's a decision that, Gadsby says, makes her incredibly vulnerable. She admits that she has to trust people — often strangers, often blindly — to help her navigate the world. And saying that on stage, in public, in her position, is terrifying.

Who will take advantage of that?

But as Nanette gave her power, now Gadsby is choosing to wield it to lift up other women with autism who, like her, may have faced discrimination and misdiagnosis.

Power: who has it, how do they get it and keep it, how do they wield it. There's never a time to not talk about this.

The difference now is that the self-described "low-class convict lesbian" and "hot potato" is giving the lecture.