Chris Weir takes his stand-up hour, Well Flung, to the Edinburgh Fringe, asking audiences one question; is companionship worth it? Here Weir talks to Pepper&Salt about making his debut, all things rom-com and the subversion of the genre.
What’s your elevator pitch?
My show is a modern-day, gay rom com about a holiday fling I had in Gran Canaria. It’s a single story told over the course of an hour.
What rom-com tropes do you use in this show?
Really it examines a kind of classic, almost filmic structure, I would say. It has the meet-cute, it has the inciting incident, and it has a low-point in the midway, as a rom-coms do. Then it builds to a climax and then there’s like denouement. So, I was conscious of the three-act structure as I was writing it. I have a background in screenwriting as well, so I wanted to spread those things together. And then in terms of that, it’s not a rom-com, I mean it is, but it’s kind of examining a pseudo-relationship. It’s a holiday relationship, it’s not a real thing. So, calling it a rom-com is kind of a joke in that it doesn’t really meet the right parameters for a classic rom-com.
What would you say then is your favourite rom-com trope?
I guess I like the meet cute. What I like how as rom coms became more popular at the end of the 90s, beginning of the 2000s, it became more and more convoluted the way that people had to meet, to keep it fresh. You know, you’ve got Sandra Bullock being in love somebody in a coma and then you’ve got like How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days, there’s this really complex thing where she has to write an article on him but he’s in a bet against her, and it’s all very puppeteered in a way that is like a very sweaty premise, but it still works and you believe it.
Why did you choose to tell this particular story for your debut?
The way it came about was I went and had this holiday in November. Me and my friends, we voice-note each other constantly and the week that I was on holiday, I didn’t voice-note them at all. So, I went through this entire 5 day romance with all these ups and downs, and I hadn’t caught them up on any of it. And I sent them a voice-note at the end of it to explain everything that happened to me, and it was 1 hour long. It took that long to go through everything. And something just clicked in my brain when I did that where I was like, “I’ve literally just done an hour of material, and “Well, at least I know I can talk about this for an hour!” And then I started working on making it funny.
“I was conscious of the three-act structure as I was writing it. I have a background in screenwriting as well, so I wanted to spread those things together”
What are some of the issues or ideas that you tackle in your show?
One is companionship; worth it or is it better to be alone? I’m also re-writing and working on it now, getting deeper; I have an examination of non-traditional relationships and whether tradition works for me or whether it’s more, whether I feel like I’m gradually learning to take a different path.
How would you describe your comedy style?
I kind of got inspired a lot by Tina Fey when I started writing comedy, so I saw her say that she tried to fit 10 pounds of jokes into a 5 pound bag, and I would say that is an ethos that I take in my comedy, where I’m really trying to get as much humour in as possible. Like really pack it full of jokes. So, pretty dense joke-telling.
What can audiences expect from your show?
Ideally, I just want them to feel good. The thing about writing this show, is it’s been a really joyous experience. The show that I wrote before this one which was 45 minutes long was a lot darker, and it’s just fun to perform something that is purely fun. I just want them to feel joy and also maybe think about different types of relationships and how we can be open to those.
Favourite moment in your show?
I mean, I have a specific joke that has a gone really well to do with the Zodiac killer. I’ve done a couple of previews, and that joke has always been the biggest laugh, so I look forward to that cause that’s very fun.
What are you looking forward to about making your Edinburgh Fringe debut?
I am looking forward to performing it every day because I just think the show will get really, really tight as it goes on. It’s already quite tight but I’ve done a half hour before at the Edinburgh Fringe and it was amazing. I did it for two weeks, by Week 2 there was no preparation needed; you just click on, you just do the show, perform a full half-hour without any hesitation and then on top of that, because you’re so familiar with the words, you can really start to play around with tone and the way that you perform it and really find new layers to the material. So, looking forward to the second and third week!
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 mean that is getting to the idea of punching up and punching down in comedy. I think as we’re becoming more empathetic as a society, we realise that punching down can just be kind of cruel. So punching up is the more favoured thing. But I also think that you don’t necessarily need to be punching anybody, you can not necessarily be talking about a person or an institution. And you can also be punching inwards, I see a lot of people do a lot of self-deprecating material as well. That being said, I would I think there’s always somebody above somebody. There’s always somebody we can punch up to, and I would be interested in seeing King Charles do a tight 5 on who he considers above him. Maybe God… I don’t know!
By Katerina Partolina Schwartz
Photo Credit: Andrew Jackson
Pepper & Salt 
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