Ahead of this year’s Machynlleth Comedy Festival, actor and stand-up Sara Pascoe chats to Buzz about breaking into comedy and the inspiration of Friedrich Nietzsche.
What first drew you to comedy as a profession?
I wasn’t attracted to comedy at the beginning, I had never seen stand-up live until a month before I did it; I thought people I saw on TV doing comedy were improvising and that they were part of some genius super-race. I did a gig as an experiment really, just as something to try. I got really drunk before it and 12 people smiled politely back while I talked, and since then standing-up has been a compulsion and I’ve been getting drunk on stage ever since.
When regaling friends with stories and jokes at the pub, most of us probably think we’re pretty funny, but what does it take to cross the threshold onto the stage?
Hmmm, I don’t know. It might be the same skills. Everyone knows that if you tell the same anecdote a few times it distils down, gets better, you exaggerate the bits that work, push certain moments further, bend the truth and conceal the surprise. We, as a species, are storytellers, our brains are programmed to do it as a way of memorising huge amounts of information and every single person has the ability and wherewithal to do it. In terms of making it your profession, the only difference is work. I was never that funny person down the pub or class clown, I was the sad earnest person trying to make herself cry as an actor, and yet even I am making a living at comedy, so I’m the living proof that anyone can.
You’re appearing at the Machynlleth Comedy Festival this year; will this be your first time?
I came last year and loved it so much. What a lovely place, and every single comic on (because Henry books it so well) was someone who I either knew and loved, or had heard lots about and was excited to see. I’m really looking forward to doing it all again this year.
What can audiences expect from your current show?
My current show is based on a Friedrich Nietzsche quote: “there are no facts, only interpretations”. In it I explore the idea that you can’t ever really trust anyone else, and the world might not be real. But then if it is real, then factory farming is wrong. I also talk about when I used to work in old people’s homes, how my cat died when I was a child, how my father wanted me aborted and why I might be an alcoholic. It’s funny stuff.
Sara Pascoe, Machynlleth Comedy Festival, Owain Glyndwr Centre, Sun 5 May. Tickets: £6. Info: www.machcomedyfest.co.uk.