Pepper&Salt joins Alex Kitson to discuss the tricky second hour, This Is Water, that he’s bringing to the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe. Our on-the-ground reporter gets existential and we have to (gently) remind them that this is a comedy show and that existentialism is really not the vibe. They don’t listen. Read the results below.
What is the elevator pitch for your show?
It’s an hour of fast-paced frenetic stand-up about all the important things no-one ever seems to talk about.
What inspired you to write this particular hour and how does David Foster Wallace come into it?
The show is named after a David Foster Wallace speech I really like. The speech is about a lot of things but what really attracted me to it was about perspective and how you have the capacity to try and decide what to think about and what to consider. I thought it was a really great theme for an hour of observational stand-up comedy. Especially as last year I discovered I’d been missing something that had been apparent to everyone else for quite a while. Like a fish in water.
What was it like to write the tricky second hour, especially going from having years to write your debut and then a year or so to write this one?
I was very keen to do a second hour but very worried about this exact issue. So I put my last show to bed as soon as I could and focused exclusively on the new show. It took a lot of work and involved a lot of time rediscovering my writing process. Your debut often is often made up of routines you’ve been doing for years and being without your long-term safety nets or ‘bankers’ is really tricky. I made a rule that I wasn’t going to do any of my old stuff after Edinburgh and I spent a lot of time in October and November bombing a lot as a result which was weird. But by April I was pretty certain it was going to be fine – and now I’m quietly confident it’ll be better than my first show.
Is there anything that links your two Edinburgh hours together?
For me the first show was about resilience and this new show is about neurodiversity but really, they are both about perspective and approaching topics that could make you despair and choosing to take the joyful, funny option – however tough that may be and how comedy can help you do that.
Looking back, what advice would you give to someone making their debut?
The show I was doing last year was about something quite traumatic and performing it took a real emotional toll on me. I didn’t truly realise it at the time, but the heightened state of emotion I was in, plus the normal physical exhaustion, meant that I was really dysregulated for a lot of the month. Dealing with what should be very minor annoyances or difficulties became incredibly hard to get my head around. The show this year is sort of a response to that, try and zoom out wherever you can. It’s hard when all you’re doing all day is thinking about you – but you gotta be cognisant of it and try and fight it. My main advice though is that the only thing you can expect is that you’re going to do your show 25 times. It’s boot camp! You’re there to get better at the thing you love to do. Everything else is a bonus so enjoy it.
What are you looking forward to at the Fringe this year?
Is it lame to say I’m looking forward to doing my show? I love the fringe, seeing shows and seeing my mates everyday – but the reason I go is to perform. I have such a cool venue and some of the shows I did last year were some of the most fun I’ve ever had – I can’t wait to do it again. That and the Ting Thai Caravan obviously.
“The speech is about a lot of things but what really attracted me to it was about perspective and how you have the capacity to try and decide what to think about and what to consider.”
In your opinion, what are we swimming in?
The water you’re swimming in is unique to you at that moment, I guess, but at the same time we’re all human and there’s a commonality to that experience. Like water, people are different things at different times. Both can be salty, fresh, sparkling, hot, cold, gassy, full of excrement etc. etc. The important thing is to make the effort to stay aware of what you’re swimming in because it’ll impact your perspective.
To give an example (something I’ve cut from the show for time); phone addiction. We’re all addicted, myself included. It’s literally changing how people view the world. I didn’t even consider myself to be someone who used their phone too much. But then I saw my screen time and was mortified. Your attention is a precious thing, phones are designed to monopolise it and they’re incredibly good at it and I don’t think we’re even close to acknowledging how much that is impacting society. To put it mildly, I don’t think that’s having a mild or, remotely positive effect. We all sort of know this, but the first step to solving any problem is realising it’s happening. That’s something an example of one of the many things we’re swimming in.
What do you see is the responsibility of the elder fish?
I think the instinct when you read the joke is to aspire to be that older fish but really, being the younger fish is better. Being curious, questioning and open to learning something new. The responsibility of the older fish is to model that I think – and definitely not to pronounce certainly on any topic.
What have you learned from last year that you have incorporated or taken onboard this year?
I’m not going to have a daily iced coffee at 10.30pm this year. Instead, I have rediscovered dextrose tablets and intend not to go nocturnal.
How far does the deep dive into philosophy and existentialism go?
It doesn’t go deep at all! I was really keen for this show, after last year’s very heavy story to approach any theme with a super light touch. Any existentialist stuff I think is subtext. It’s mostly an hour of routines that would work outside of the show – and hopefully an ‘aha’ moment at the end. It’s there if you want it basically, like an After Eight.
You appear to be tackling a lot of big questions this year. Do you feel like they’re the right ones? What if at the end of all of this the answer is just 42?
I don’t have the answers – nor do I pretend to! To quote the speech, ‘The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it.” In a way, asking the question is its own answer. If thinking the answer is 42 helps you be a good person – that brilliant. There’s way worse options,
By Katerina Partolina Schwartz
Photo credit: Amilla Sadhra
Pepper & Salt 
Leave a comment