Returning to the Fringe with his show, It's So Hard To Speak Without Saying Something Stupid, Thor Stenhaug talks to Katerina Partolina Schwartz about the development of his hour, writing and comedy process.
it’s like a monologue disguised as a dialogue and if I’m just there with a little notepad, that dialogue just completely disappears
What can audiences expect from your show this year?
This year I’m interested in more the story aspect of the show as a whole. Last year I was much more like, “Okay, this is a good bit, this is a good bit, let’s put them all together,” While this year, I think it’ll be a mix of me just trying to work on the show as one show and then it’ll be a lot of new bits. I’m trying to do as much as possible that I’ve never done before. Most of it will have been written in the last year, it’ll be a lot of new stuff. I realised I’d written more this year than I’ve ever done before. The main thing is that it’ll be a lot of fun. It’s going to be a lot more playful I think than it’s been before.
What was your full run in London like compared to your work in progresses?
That was interesting. It was somewhere in between what I did last year and what I’m doing this year. I had so much fun doing that. It is just so fun when you perform to your audience, cause you don’t have to convince anyone at the start, “Hey, don’t worry I’m funny,” because they’ve all come to see you, so they all know that. So that was really fun. On the day it was quite special because I had just shot an advert for a Swedish cinnamon bun company, so it was a bit of a hectic day because I had got this thing and we were shooting from, I think I got picked up at 8 in the morning and we finished at 6:30, and then my show was at like 9:30. And two days before, I completely lost my voice, like completely. So, I went on voice rest for, it would have been 38 hours, where I just didn’t speak at all. Like my flatmates would come in and I would just like type on my phone and they would answer, and I would type another thing, cause my voice was just completely gone. I was still very much working on that show. It was the first time I’d written when I hadn’t been speaking.
What is your writing process usually like?
I like to write and then I say it out loud a lot, and then I maybe rephrase it and I kind of walk around and I mutter to myself a bit, so that was a completely new experience that I just had to write this and then just before the show started, I said it for the first time. So that was strange; it is very different when you write something and then you say it out loud, that’s a different experience, and then when you say it in front of an audience, again it’s a completely different experience. I really listen to myself on some of the more sincere bits, I was like, “Oh I can tell that I’m getting a little bit awkward here, that it’s not like a clear joke, this is a bit more emotional, I’m getting a bit more awkward, that’s definitely something I need to work on.” That’s definitely something that I want in a show, to have more vulnerable moments, but that was definitely something that was new to me.
What was your experience like when you first started doing comedy?
It kind of started when I was 18, like I used to work front of house at a comedy club in Norway, in Bergen. And I was so into comedy, I would sit front of house, check people’s tickets, and I’d do it all for free and then I’d be allowed to watch the shows, and I could hang in the green room with the comedians. And then when I was 24, I moved to the UK, I was going to uni in Liverpool, and all my friends were moving to London, and at that point I was like, “I’m definitely starting to do comedy now.” Then I moved to London. It was a long time coming, but I think if I started earlier, I may have been a bit scared cause it is very brutal when you start; first of all, you’re not very funny cause you’ve never done it before, you don’t have any material to rely on, but also if you start somewhere like London, it’s super lonely cause there are so many people starting out at the same time and maybe some people start forming friendship groups, but you don’t know anyone. And also, you’re not very good, so no one’s like, “Hey! Let’s hang out with this guy who’s doing his third ever gig.” But slowly you meet around the same people, and you get on better gigs. I remember when I did my first Fringe in 2019, I made so many friends around that time. So that was really nice. That is why I love the Fringe so much, my first experience, I felt I was at summer camp and all of my friends were there and it was like amazing, we just all would hang out and stay up late at night and. I definitely learned a lot of lessons as well. I never drink before I go onstage, but that was the year that I realised I’m also not very funny if I’m hungover, so like last year I didn’t really drink all of the festival because you’re just not as quick. Then the pandemic happened, it was super weird! I kind of just stopped and I moved back to Norway. I worked all of these different jobs, like I worked as a teacher in a school that I went to. I’m not a qualified teacher, but they were just so desperate for people so I was an English teacher, cause they were like, “Oh, he lives in the UK, he can speak English,” and a PE teacher. I taught music because I’d gone to a performing arts school, and they just thought that I was an expert in music, and I just never said anything. And then when I got back to London, I was able to go full time pretty quickly, which was fun.
When you do your work in progress shows, how are you able to keep track of the– what works what doesn’t – as well as choose which material to try out? Do you plan ahead or do you react in the moment?
It’s a little bit of both, a lot of it is planned ahead and what I did last year was I made sure to have a goal with ever performance, maybe that could be a restructure of the show, it could be a couple of new bits that I have in. Last year when I did a work-in-progress, I never took out a notebook or anything, because I kind of think - even if it’s a work in progress- you kind of just lose that connection with the audience completely. People say that it’s like a monologue disguised as a dialogue and if I’m just there with a little notepad, that dialogue just completely disappears, I think. I got told this rule by another comedian called Micky Overman, and she had a rule that she would go through all of her stuff and when she got onstage, whatever she remembered, she remembered, and that’s just it. All bets are off, and you go on. So, I kind of try and do that as well. When I did it in London, I did have a setlist next to me because there was just so much to remember, there were so many things I never said before, and things were in a completely different order than I would normally do. I think a setlist is okay because you can kind of joke around with it. I have nothing against other people doing it, I just think I would struggle to do it, but maybe I should try it because I’ve never tried it properly.
Do you have a favourite part of comedy?
I do loads of crowd-work and I really like doing crowd-work, but I do think the best part of comedy is when you’ve written a bit and you’ve been working on a bit and it really starts to work. The best feeling is when you write something and you go, “Wow this is actually the best joke I’ve ever written, like I just never had this and now I have this joke.” I always think I’m not going to tell it forever, but I have this feeling that I have it forever. That’s definitely the best feeling. I do love building stuff, so even when you do a joke for the first time, it might be a rough draft and then you add on stuff to it and it becomes a thing, and you’re just like, “Wow, I just built this.” I don’t have anything that I don’t like. There are so many things I love, I love that but also when people come back to see you, or people have been, or you’ve been recommended by other people.
