Before bringing his new show, Stuart Laws: Stuart Laws Has To Be Joking? To the Edinburgh Fringe, Stuart Laws chats to Katerina Partolina Schwartz about his comedy and changes within the Fringe itself.
A friend once described me as, “An observational comedian that doesn’t understand what he’s observed.
Why did you make this change from making things up to telling the truth last year?
For me I always found it easier rather than being like, “Oh now I have to talk about this real thing.” And I think also maybe a sense of there wasn’t that much interesting stuff about me that was worth talking about and the interesting stuff would get hidden behind the lies or the made up stories, and now being like now I’ve gotten older that I think there is value in my perspective of some things or there’s value in my experience of life that is not only funny but interesting for the first time.
I’d been trying for a few years to do the show that I did last year and I would write stuff; I would do little bits here and there that would be nudging towards this sort of more truth telling show and it always never quite landed in the right way and I’d veer away and write a silly routine or something like that. So my 2019 show was starting with that as a perspective, my 2021 show was starting with that as an intention to try and tell the truth and be more open and honest, and it wasn’t until 2023 show that everything fell into place with it and I sort of found the right framing for it and the way to slowly become more vulnerable on stage over the course of a show. Last year’s show started off with me lying to the audience, then revealing that I had been lying and then telling the truth from that point on in an increasingly more vulnerable way, ending with a routine about long grief as a thing that will be with you for the entirety of your life. And obviously you can’t jump straight into that, you gotta ease people in.
And it was definitely a fun sort of challenge to and that’s why so often I bailed out of doing it, because I hadn’t found the right way to talk about it yet. And you can try it at new material gigs or friendly fringe festivals, trying out work-in-progresses, but doing it as a show that you want to tour and film as a special, you’re like “Yeah, it has to be very particular, it has to be consistently funny whilst at the same time honouring the subject because it’s not enough to be flippant about the subject and throw it away.” If I was going to talk about something like that, I didn’t want to just be “Oh you get sad plenty when someone dies.” I wanted to bring a more unique perspective, something specific to myself that I also felt that would be picked up on and reflected on by audiences. And I think I achieved that, and it's been really fun to do on tour. And the new show is an extension of that it’s a semi-sequel to that show.
How would you describe your comedy style and how did you know that was right for you?
It’s observational, it’s storytelling but it is definitely unusual. A friend once described me as, “An observational comedian that doesn’t understand what he’s observed. And I always liked that sort of thing of like I’m being like, “Hey, we all know this thing, right?” and everyone’s like, “Yeah, yeah, we know that” and then it goes off in a direction that non-one expected. For me, as I’ve gotten older, I definitely have found that people seem to really like the fact that the show is continually silly, it doesn’t take itself seriously despite dealing with serious subjects. The last show, I talk about being child-free, I talk about being single, I talk about grief. The show is about permanence, what sticks with you throughout your life and what doesn’t. And this new show is about relationships and it’s about how you manage those, including with yourself if you don’t truly understand yourself and I’m talking about that through an autistic perspective. There’s so much that applies to so many people who are neurotypical, neurodiverse; you can’t engage in relationships whether they be friendship, romantic or familial without being able to reflect truly on who you are and how you’re engaging with people. And it’s something as someone who is diagnosed autistic late in life to be like, suddenly your whole life is seen through a different perspective. And these sound like weighty subjects but ultimately they’re still me, an idiot trying to make people laugh whilst sort of addressing these larger themes which is why I think this last show went as well as it did and why this new show seems to be going as well in previews.
What’s your favourite part of the show?
I mean there’s a routine about Jesus definitely being autistic which is always a fun bit and keeps expanding and retracting and you know, it’s a real fun thing to sort of play with an audience. I’m not saying that I’m a dirty comedian now but I like have been talking about bodily fluids in this show in a way that I was never ever comfortable talking about or joking about and it’s a fun routine that still very much a work in progress but seeing where the limits are for people to hear someone who isn’t, I’m not an overly filthy comedian I’m doing it with a slight sense of disgust to it myself. Seeing how far an audience goes in discussing the Big 5… liquids that can be going into a toilet, I mean that’s a pretty visceral routine.
What would you say is the most difficult part of being a comedian?
The admin. There’s so much more admin than people realise. There’ll be swathes of time where I’m like, “Oh why am I not gigging at that gig or that gig.” And I’m like, “Because I haven’t emailed them to ask or I haven’t done this or suddenly you’re like I need to invoice for like six gigs that I have done,” and it’s just this annoying reality of having to do dull paperwork in order for you to facilitate you being able to do this job. And when you’re in that sort of mid space where between you’re earning a huge amount of money from it where you can have someone who does all of that stuff and you know being offered gigs left, right and centre to when you’re in a mid-space where you get offered nice gigs but you also have to chase to do nice gigs as well and you have to do your own invoicing and social media. I mean you got to do posts all the time, you got to be building an audience that way and there’s very few comics out there who get to just go out there, be funny and then people keep on coming to see them. It’s so much work in building an audience and maintaining that audience and working out the correct time of day to post and all of those sorts of things can be quite dull. But when you get a good day where you just blast all of that stuff, boy it feels good. Sometimes feels even better than smashing a gig. “I smashed admin today!”
How long have you been coming to the Edinburgh Fringe?
My debut show was 2013 and then 2011, I did a small show where I did 20 minutes as part of a larger show. That was a real fun year, for me still one of my highlights was that year because it was 2011, I was in my 20s, not set, I didn’t have an agent at the time, I didn’t have like, “Oh I have to do this sort of show, I could just go onstage for 20 minutes and be funny and then have a great, fun rest of the day.”
How as it changed since you started?
For me is always I look forward to it and it definitely feels bigger, that pandemic pause did seem to just swell even bigger and sort of more difficult to stand out and more difficult to be like to feel like there was a focus on you or your show. You definitely still feel much like you’re in a sea of thousands and thousands of other people and that has seemingly got bigger and bigger each year. I think Monkey Barrel coming in and running a venue there is such a huge change and a huge shift that has been so valuable, and you see that with line-ups how valued they are by comedians. It’s just for an audience to know that if you go to Monkey Barrel, you can pick any show at any time and you’re probably going to have a really good time is such a great thing to have I love the Pleasance and have done lots of shows with the Pleasance and they’re serving a slightly different audience and I think it’s good to have someone like Monkey Barrel come in and offer that as a counter point. And audiences seem to love that. The Free Fringe and Free Festival seems to have less of an influence, these days and maybe that is a shame because it definitely had a few years in the middle like 2013-16/17 where it was like loads of really good shows were on the Free Fringe or Free Festival and that was big. And that perhaps that’s a sad thing it seems to have declined slightly.
