Making his debut at the Edinburgh Fringe, Alex Kitson – also known as one of Bristol’s and Devon’s finest – chats to Pepper&Salt about the writing process for his show, ‘Must I Paint You A Picture?’, Brexit, and the roles of fools and kings.
What was the writing process like for Must I Paint You A Picture?
I’ve been working on the show for a while. It’s my first hour but I’ve been doing stand-up for 6 years, so it’s got a lot of my routines from clubs; hundreds and hundreds and thousands of gigs are all in there. Lots of the routines are from that. It’s the best of my stand-up that fits the themes and what I’m trying to talk about. The story itself I wrote initially for a friend’s podcast about survival stories, and they said, “You’ve got to do a show about this.” I really didn’t want to because I hadn’t really dealt with it in any real way, and then I was like, “Well, here’s a challenge.” So I did a storytelling evening, in front of like 10 people, told the story as is reading from the diary I had at the time – which I read in the show – and then blended the stand-up. I’ve been doing previews around the country; I did the Brighton Fringe last year with the show and it ended up getting nominated for the Best of Brighton Fringe Comedy Award just as a work-in-progress. I’ve been tinkering with it ever since. There’s a balance between being too sickeningly sweet and sincere and too much or being too jokey and making people feel weird. So just trying to get that right is what I’ve been working on ever since then, with an eye to Edinburgh this summer.
You are tackling some very difficult subjects in this show that will be uncomfortable for a lot of people. How did you find that balance in being truthful to your story and experience whilst acknowledging and working within the medium of stand-up comedy?
I mean stand-up jokes come first. You’re there to laugh, it’s not theatre. I think stand-up gets really, really fantastic and can transcend that when you tackle bigger things and when it’s honest. And I think with a lot of my stand-up and especially in the process of writing this show, my funny stuff is when I’m being as honest as possible. It’s quite a long story that I’ve managed to trim down, but so much of it is explaining who I was and why I ended up in the situation I did, because in hindsight I was really naïve in a lot of ways. And explaining who I was at the time actually fits in with a lot of the material I have; I’m from Devon in the West Country, the countryside, being obsessed with America, I thought it was so cool and so sexy, exciting and dynamic, which fits in with a lot of my material. So, it’s explaining who I was, so when I start telling the story, you go, “Oh that’s classic this guy.” Hopefully that’s where a lot of the comedy comes from. And I touch on some dark things but with a light touch; the moment the audience feel bad for you as a comedian, the comedy does really start to dry up. That’s really not my intention. The process of doing the show has been a process of making sure I am fine with myself doing the story – which I wasn’t at the start – and getting okay with it and then it being translated to the audience that, “Yeah, oh no, I am fine.” It’s a very – obviously dark things – but it is a funny story with a message that I want to get across and want to do with my comedy in the future as well.
Would you mind expanding on some of the ideas mentioned in your press release, in particular Brexit and the ideas of hope?
The story takes place in the summer of 2016 on the night of Brexit. And I’m 19, very left-wing, about to go be a politics student, very anti-Brexit. Because the story takes place on that night, that really for me is a symbolic puncturing of innocence and optimism, and I think in hindsight really changed my perspective on things. And why I started thinking about that was when I had a – not similar – but another instance of a very emotionally tricky time two years ago and I felt the same way that I felt at that point. I realised that the two moments are very similar cause they’re moments when I believed things would get better had fallen away basically. So, Brexit was huge for me as someone who was very politically edged and young, that felt cataclysmic. Being lucky enough to be born in the 90s and then grow up in the UK in the 00s, it felt like – there were books about it – the end of history. I talk about Obama a lot in the show, but his election and everything, it all felt like things were going to be okay. Trump hadn’t’ been elected yet, in the UK that shock moment happened 6 months before – not quite 6 months – but happened in the summer. It’s that equivalent for me basically.
What would you then say is the difference between US comedy and British comedy?
I think it’s merging. I think my generation of British comics are equally if not more inspired by American comics than we are by British comics, because we haven’t grown up on one or the other, and America leads the way in terms of global stand-up. It’s hard to put in sort of headlines. I think it’s a cultural thing where Brits don’t really like a winner; anyone’s who’s too up themselves or anyone who’s a bit too – I’m trying to think of words that aren’t masculine because it’s the same across genders – sort of alpha comedy, there’s not much of that in Britain. I’m thinking of people like Chris Distefano, Andrew Schulz, Andrew Dice Clay. I know that’s a very masculine thing, but also if you think about Joan Rivers, or Nikki Glaser, it’s very very top down. But British people don’t like any sniff of – I’m not accusing those acts of it at all –putting themselves above. British comedy tends to be way more self-deprecatory. I think that’s the main difference I know is that I can never win in anything I do onstage, I can never come up on top.
In Shakespeare, the role of the fool and the king are very distinct, with the idea that a fool can’t be a king and a king can’t be a fool. How do you think this applies to the modern context?
There’s definitely that dynamic. You can get ‘king’ comedians in the US, these big, powerful people. There’s definitely that dynamic right of king and joker, and the joker can take the mick out of the king, can criticise the king through humour. I think that definitely applies and maybe it’s a wider thing about class still being a big divider here, and that dynamic being so much stricter than opposed to America – obviously, class is huge- but the dividing lines have historically been race. You have that American Dream and aspiration and the idea that anyone can become the king. I think that plays into it. It’s super relevant and when you’re talking about the big famous comedians who are doing jokes about say trans people or other things, it does feel like, “You’re the king who’s telling jokes, you don’t do that.” That’s definitely relevant at the moment.
By Katerina Partolina Schwartz
Photo Credit: George Smileham
Pepper & Salt 
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