Emma Memma flies into Perth for Telethon

When Emma Watkins first arrived in Perth for Telethon last year, she experienced something many other east coast-based performers before her have also gone through.

There isn’t a word for it in English, so maybe we need to make one up: Tele-awed? Jaw-drop-a-thon? Something to capture that first-timer-at-Telethon feeling of “Oh gosh, this is actually quite a big deal”.

“Last year really opened my eyes to Telethon and the sheer support from the community to the cause — I was really quite blown away,” Watkins tells PLAY.

“I think it’s lovely. And for it to be so focused over that 24-hour period, it’s like: ‘wow, this is a huge working bee’.”

And so when she was invited back to perform this year, she jumped at the opportunity, despite her busy schedule of concerts, meet-and-greets and work promoting Australian sign language, Auslan.

“I left the Wiggles so I wouldn’t do this all the time,” Watkins says of her packed schedule. “We do a lot less touring, but we do a lot of visits and appearances and meet-and-greets. A lot less than we used to but it’s still a lot!”

Her diary is likely to stay pretty full.

Since Watkins parted ways with the popular children’s group The Wiggles in 2021, she has thrown herself into creating Emma Memma, swapping the famous yellow skivvy for an orange frock.

She is back on our screens with her upbeat children’s songs, and her range of merchandise is hot property with the day care set. She and her team — Elvin Melvin and BB Butterfly — have been touring the country playing to increasingly large audiences of very small people.

“We’ve recognised such a huge change in our audience, and these Emma Memma fans are very loyal and and have been so supportive since we started,” she says.

“We’re just starting to see now with this new tour how much the audiences have increased since last year. We’ve only been touring just over a year, which is crazy, and already the audience size has almost doubled, which is wild.”

While many performers who become famous for a particular character or show may struggle to shake off associations with their former persona, Watkins has something of an advantage.

While Emma Memma may have only been created three years ago, most of her fans are too young to know her as anything else.

“Our audience is younger. They’re basically two,” she says. “And I think that’s been a lovely shift as well. It really is their first concert, or their first musical experience, or the first time that they might have seen sign language. And so it’s just completely different.”

Since leaving The Wiggles, Watkins has thrown herself into learning Auslan.

It has been a passion of hers since she was a child, when her best friend’s brothers, who are deaf, used Auslan to communicate. She says during her years with The Wiggles she would repeatedly sign up to Auslan courses, but kept having to drop out because of her busy schedule.

“Then through the pandemic, they changed the course to be online and that essentially changed my whole life,” Watkins says.

She threw herself into learning Auslan and working on her PhD about integrating sign language and dance into children’s screen media. It’s not just academic with Watkins, though. Emma Memma’s sidekick Elvin Melvin translates her show using Auslan, and Watkins has become a passionate advocate for Auslan across the country.

“Probably 70 per cent of my time is Emma Memma and 30 per cent of my time is actually working with deaf organisations around Australia, in schools, and that just kind of is not really to do with Emma Memma at all,” she says.

Watkins says as a hearing person, she does not want to be seen as a representative of the deaf community, but she is passionate about improving accessibility and communication for all children

“Auslan is great to offer for children, not just children that might be deaf, but children who are autistic, or children that might be non-verbal,” she says.

“We see a whole plethora of children coming to our shows. Emma Memma is not necessarily a sign language show. It’s not a show just for the deaf community. It’s a show for everybody.

“But we now can see how many family networks are improving their communication with themselves because they have more visual skills and more visual resources because they’ve been watching Emma Memma.

“We know it’s so great and we hope schools start teaching Auslan, but we just have to now support the amazing deaf professionals in this country so that they can roll out the curriculum.”

But right now, Watkins’ focus is on WA, and getting stuck into the Telethon efforts.

“We are going to be performing some songs, we will be visiting hospitals, we will be on the phones, we’ll be trying to do as much as we possibly can,” she says.