Back at the Fringe for a second year, Amy Matthews chats to Pepper&Salt about her new show, Commute With The Foxes, the changing nature of context, and the menagerie within her comedy.
What are the foxes a metaphor for?
I realised that obviously as a comedian I work at a very unusual and inconsistent times and I travel a lot and you get the sensation that the same way that people work in hospitality or people who do shift work, you’re working against the current against the rest of you know 9-5 working day and week. So, I don’t have commuters in the same way as somebody who gets the train or tube every day to their office does, but it struck me that when people have a 9-5 or regular work- whatever that looks like to them- there’s usually the odd few characters on their way to work, treading the same paths or doing the same route and you see them consistently every day at the same time even though you don’t know each other. There’s a familiar anchor to your day even though you don’t know them. And the closest I’ve gotten to that is urban foxes; it doesn’t matter what city I’m in, doesn’t matter if I’m walking home at 10pm or 1am, I always see a fox on my walk back to the hotel or the accommodation or my home. And that’s the closest I have to that bloke on the tube every day with his Financial Times. And so the title came before the show really, and when I started writing the show and I realised it was going to be how much context completely transforms meaning and reframes things in very individualised ways, the title made even more sense to me. For anyone else foxes are you know plodding around in bins in the middle of the night being quite annoying, whereas for me they’re kind of… peers ,when I’m walking home and it had the right balance; I hope it is an intriguing title but it’s also not too alienating. One of the working titles I had for the show was Sometimes the Shipping Forecast Is A Haiku. As much as that’s funny to me and kind of encapsulates the same thing of the transformative nature of context, it is just inaccessible and a real kind of self-parody title, so I thought Commute With The Foxes is the right balance of being punchy enough and also a nice balance of poetic and beautiful.
There was almost a theatrical element to your last show. How did you find this style and work it into your comedy?
I’m being directed by Elf Lyons again this year exactly the same as last year and the reason I wanted to work with Elf, not only because I think she’s extraordinary at what she does, but also because she has a very theatrical background and I wanted to work out how to incorporate those elements into stand-up. It’s such an interesting art from and it’s being pushed and pushed the more comedians there are, the more comedy that is consumed. People are just doing such interesting things with it. and I wanted it to feel visual and theatrical, exactly the same as last year, last year’s had sound design and lighting design, and this year is going to be the same, there’s going to be sound design and lighting design. I think it’s just the way my brain works, I find it really difficult not to have a very holistic visual approach to it. So, usually before I even start writing the show, I have at least an idea for a title, the artwork comes to me before I finish writing the show, I usually have a playlist that I work with whilst I am writing the show, it’s not necessarily the playlist for the walk-in music or anything like that, it’s just something that happens in tandem, I see it as a really inextricably linked thing. I have to sort of work in a very holistic, visual way. And interestingly – I actually address this in the show – I learned this year that I’ve got something called spatial sequencing synaesthesia where I can only conceptualise time and periods of time in very visual ways, so I see things as having colour and shape, so for me November is royal purple and it’s quite wide. I just thought that’s how everyone’s brains work in a way that you do and I verbalised it a few times to people and they were like, “We don’t know what that is,” and then I googled some of the ways I conceptualise periods of time and things and abstract concepts, and it was throwing up that that’s what this is; I see colour and shape in abstract things. And it’s been so interesting finding that out because it explained how I visualise concepts right at the beginning; when an idea is germinated, I find it really hard to build on things locally and methodically. I see it as a whole and then I kind of prune it and work out how to make that come to fruition. But it’s always a very visual thing first and then I fill in the gaps in hopefully funny and interesting ways. But it’s always a very visual and holistic concept first, which I don’t know, quite a weird way of working I suppose. But I think that’s why there is so much visual stuff in it.
What is your favourite joke or moment to reach in your show?
I’ve got a really fun and very silly bit about a turtle. There’s a bit of an act-out in it that I really enjoy doing and it seems to be a really reliable big laugh and I look forward to doing it because I know there’s a big tension breaker coming and that’s been really fun to do. You’ll have to find out what the turtle bit is when you see it. It does sound like a menagerie. There are not always spiders, and foxes and turtles. I”ve sort of got to watch that I don’t brand myself as a zoological comedian, but the turtle bit is – if I do say so myself – very funny.
Apart from your own hour what shows would you recommend?
I really really can’t wait to see what Adam Flood’s doing this year. There’s nobody doing stuff quite like him. There are musical comedians, and he is technically I suppose a musical comedian, but I don’t think there’s anyone using tech in quite the same way as him. He uses like techno pop in stand-up comedy, and I just think that’s so cool, so I’m really excited to see what mad-cap stuff he’s going to come up with this year. Kemah Bob, their show premise this year is a really bonkers story that I won’t give away too much because I spoke to them about it at a gig, but I cannot wait to see that told. I saw some extracts from it at a gig we did a while ago and that sounds absolutely, it just sounds so funny, and they’re so funny. And Sarah Keyworth as well, they won something at Melbourne and I also can’t wait to see their show. I think it’s going to be a career defining show and they’re one of the best people to ever do it, so I can’t wait to see what they come up with. They’re my three that I’m genuinely excited to book tickets for.
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?
I remember and I can’t take credit for this quote, I think it sort of infiltrated general consciousness now so I don’t know who said it originally but someone said, “People used to listen to politicians and laugh at comedians and now people listen to comedians and laugh at politicians,” and I mean that’s quite a grandiose little aphorism, but I think there’s something in it. I don’t do explicitly satirical or political stuff, I think everything’s political in its own way but as far as branding me as a political comedian, I’m far from it. But I do think there’s something very special in the fact that it is still one of the most accessible art forms, in that I don’t think it alienates people in the way that the visual arts can or some what we consider as ‘high art’ – heavily quote unquote – you know opera, ballet, experimental theatre, things that imply you need some kind of specialist knowledge or understanding of it. I think there’s something really amazing about stand-up – and people still have tastes in stand-up of course – but I think there’s something really amazing about it as an art form that means anyone can listen to it and engage with it and if a comedian’s not for you, that’s fine too. There’s something really rare about it just being a person speaking to a room of people and that creating a sense of kinship that’s available to everyone. I also think it’s an art from and a medium that shows instead of tells, not always it depends on a comedian’s style, but I think it’s quite nice to have in this day and age which is a very divided and polarized world, you can go up and listen to someone talk. You don’t have to agree with everything they say, you don’t have to find all of it funny, but you can just absorb with a collective group of people, that’s not hugely present in everyday life now.
By Katerina Partolina Schwartz
Photo Credit: Dylan Woodley
Pepper & Salt 
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