2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The National
Tiff Stevenson explores sex and politics at Edinburgh Fringe
The actress and comedian brings her new standup show, Post Coital, to the Monkey Barrel Hive from August 1 till August 24. The set weaves politics with modern existential anxieties, asking questions like how long a woman must stay sexy whilst positing that the UK Government must be on Ozempic since 'the economy is looking snatched'.
Stevenson – who has appeared on shows like Mock the Week, 8 Out Of 10 Cats and the Bafta-winning series People Just Do Nothing – spoke with The National ahead of her return to the Fringe.
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'It's a festival of ideas as much as it is art … and it's just the most exciting and creative place to be for the month of August', she said of her upcoming return to Edinburgh, where she has been amongst the best reviewed acts five times previously.
'There's still that feeling that when you pull in the train at Waverley station, you get a feeling of sickness in the pit of your stomach. You're like, 'oh, it's about to happen' – it's a mix of nervousness and excitement.'
With this year's Fringe taking place in a political landscape which becomes more and more tumultuous by the day, Stevenson believes it's still important to be able to joke about serious topics.
'The main thing we have to do is err on the side of funny – lead with funny first and make people think second, because I think people now more than ever get turned off by thinking', she explained.
'As a left-wing person, we constantly focus on the minute differences that we have, rather than coming together as a whole in order to kind of make a cohesive change.
'These little, kind of micro-arguments that we have are not necessarily progressive. We have to be able to have difficult conversations, and we have to be able to dip into the grey areas to be able to try and make some headway.
'Comedy should be about making people think or showing them how you think and how you've got there, and they go away and ask some questions – no one wants to feel like they're being preached to.'
She told The National that the show came from thinking about all of the 'wild and wacky ideas' that spring to mind once 'sex is out of the way'.
(Image: Steve Ullathorne)'Maybe the UN should only meet after they've had a good shag', she joked.
'I feel like there's a lot of pent-up aggression in the world that could be released in a slightly healthier way, rather than firing penis shaped missiles and rockets.
'It feels very much like we're on the brink of World War Three at the moment, so I will be talking a bit about that in the show. There will be a combination, if I get it right, of personal, political and social themes.'
Although Stevenson is English, both her father and her husband are from Scotland. She said her husband Paul, the director of Post Coital, keeps an eye on the 'sensibility' of things.
'We make sure we're not just plonking a show in Edinburgh that has nothing to do with Scotland or the people of Scotland', she said.
In past shows, the comedian has touched on several slightly taboo subjects, like ageing in the public eye and our unhealthy dependency on the internet. Stevenson touched on the pressure of maintaining an eternal youth whilst speaking frankly about the lack of information and research on one of the biggest biological changes that women experience: the menopause.
She said: 'I put a video out a few months ago about a perimenopausal vampire and people were saying 'Oh my God, you're putting yourself in an age bracket if you do that'.
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'I don't even know if I am menopausal and the reason that I don't know is because there's no information.
'All women have is asking other women, 'Have you had this?' 'Is this happening to you?' 'Do you feel angry all the time? I feel angry' and so on.
'That is a failing of all the medical institutions that there's no information available for women apart from us talking to each other, because the only the research only goes into illnesses and drug trials with men as the standard.
'So, it's hard, trying to understand the phases of life and what we go through without thinking 'this is everything and this totally defines me', as opposed to knowing that it's a part of life, and a part that we all move through.'
Tickets for Post Coital are available through the official Edinburgh Fringe website. Edinburgh Festival Fringe
