Pepper&Salt spends an interview with Sam Nicoresti before she brings her new show, Baby Doomer, to the Edinburgh Fringe, deconstructing her deconstruction of the human experience, philosophising about absurdism and the general state of the world.
What is the elevator pitch for your show?
I would never talk to someone in an elevator, that would scare me. I could be in an elevator with the head of Netflix and all I’d say would be ‘Which floor?’, although I like to think I’d deliver it in a way that would stick with them long into the humid late afternoon
What would be the title of your show as either a click-bait or The Onion headline?
Sick Trans “Comedian” Exposes Herself [Emotionally] In Front of Innocent Crowd of Normals
If it’s not too much of a spoiler, what is your favourite part of your show?
There’s a routine about Sméagol from Lord of the Rings which I quite like doing just because it’s fun to say Sméagol with a bit of a Yiddish fricative twang. I hope it makes it into Edinburgh, I’m not sure if other people really love the routine yet, but it’s definitely one of my favourite bits.
What are you looking forward to about the Edinburgh Fringe this year?
Having the same conversation about ticket sales 10 times a day with every random comic I half know who I bump into on Cowgate.
What do you hope audiences take away from your show?
Their lives.
What is the point where reality and absurdism meet?
The obverse of an egg.
If you had to deconstruct the human experience in broad terms, what would they be?
How do you give purpose to life when you know you are going to die? Is it better to live selfishly and forefront the known reality of your senses, or sacrifice immediate pleasures to an imagined greater ideal? These questions, but with dance breaks.
In your opinion, what are the criteria for an event or story to reach the point where you can say ‘you really couldn’t write it’?
A sample size of 1000 writers all physically trying to put pen to paper. If they literally physically cannot get the pen to touch the paper and form words, then we’d have to call it there and admit something very strange, but heartwarmingly honest, was afoot.
”The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house XD”
In recent years, what would you say is the inflation rate for absurdism in 2025 compared to, say the last time you were at the Fringe?
There’s more clowning now. Some say we’re at peak clown. Others whisper we’re already post-clown. They kind of represent a view of absurdism as a learnt and studied thing, which I would say isn’t really absurdism at all, but structured surrealism. Absurdism to me is watching someone with absolutely no skin in the game, with zero career goals, and next to no desire to be popular, doing the strangest most half-baked thing in the worst time slot in the Three Sisters. That’s absurd. Absurdism is the complete disdain of the form. There’s always the exact same amount of those guys, it’s a self-sustaining one-in-one-out policy.
What would you say is the difference between regular stand up and absurdism, and what would be an easy way to tell when something becomes absurdist?
Are you laughing at what the person on stage is doing, or the fact that they’re doing it? Do you feel like you’re at a sleepover circa age 15 at 2 in the morning and everyone’s got a bit giddy whilst trying to make toast. That’s absurdism.
If there’s a banality of evil, is there an absurdity of evil? Or an absurdity of good? And if so, what does it look like?
I refer you to The Act of Killing. I think the rest is too much to think about, but I’d suggest that evil is inherently absurd, that’s what makes it evil rather than immoral. I don’t know if good can ever be absurd, but absurd people can be good, so maybe.
A few years ago, I had an interview with a comedian who said that a few years down the road after COVID some report will come out and it’ll turn out that we all had a much bigger mental breakdown than we realised. How much do you think this is the case – have the past five years just been one huge mental breakdown?
I mean I shaved my hair off and came out as trans – so yeah probably. I don’t know if I’d call it a breakdown though, it was more of an unravelling.
Is there anything that you would like to mention that I haven’t asked
The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house XD
By Katerina Partolina Schwartz
Photo Credit: Rebecca Need-Menear
Pepper & Salt 
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