The outspoken standup talks about teenage bad behaviour, panel shows and the ‘stubborn’ iPhone pest who inspired her Manchester international festival show
The seeds of Sara Pascoe’s Manchester international festival (MIF) show were planted at last year’s Edinburgh fringe. She was performing Sara Pascoe v History, a winningly eclectic anthropology of relationships, of why they fail and how they might succeed – which secured her first (long overdue) Edinburgh comedy award nomination. One night, she looked into the audience and saw someone absorbed in their iPhone. “It kept tinging, he was just scrolling through it,” she says. “I was so furious. I’d usually ignore that, but this time I said, ‘Are you just going to sit there and text?’ And he didn’t even look up at me. I was like, ‘I’m right here, and you won’t even look at me. You won’t even look me in the eye! What you’re doing is so rude!’”
Later, she got an email. “It was this man, explaining that it was his mother’s phone, he was trying to work out how to switch it off. And that he had cerebral palsy, and whenever he spoke up at comedy gigs, people assumed he was drunk. And because I was being horrible to him, he didn’t want to meet my eye.” Pascoe was horrified – and interested. “What I had created in my mind – this stubborn, rude man – was the exact opposite of the truth. It was actually someone who was scared.” An idea for a show was born, “to do with empathy, and how we create narratives about other people’s actions that either excuse or demonise them. So now I’m trying to find funny stories that demonstrate that ...”
Continue reading... Reported by guardian.co.uk 18 hours ago.
The seeds of Sara Pascoe’s Manchester international festival (MIF) show were planted at last year’s Edinburgh fringe. She was performing Sara Pascoe v History, a winningly eclectic anthropology of relationships, of why they fail and how they might succeed – which secured her first (long overdue) Edinburgh comedy award nomination. One night, she looked into the audience and saw someone absorbed in their iPhone. “It kept tinging, he was just scrolling through it,” she says. “I was so furious. I’d usually ignore that, but this time I said, ‘Are you just going to sit there and text?’ And he didn’t even look up at me. I was like, ‘I’m right here, and you won’t even look at me. You won’t even look me in the eye! What you’re doing is so rude!’”
Later, she got an email. “It was this man, explaining that it was his mother’s phone, he was trying to work out how to switch it off. And that he had cerebral palsy, and whenever he spoke up at comedy gigs, people assumed he was drunk. And because I was being horrible to him, he didn’t want to meet my eye.” Pascoe was horrified – and interested. “What I had created in my mind – this stubborn, rude man – was the exact opposite of the truth. It was actually someone who was scared.” An idea for a show was born, “to do with empathy, and how we create narratives about other people’s actions that either excuse or demonise them. So now I’m trying to find funny stories that demonstrate that ...”
Continue reading... Reported by guardian.co.uk 18 hours ago.