A giant sentient disco ball sits in the front row at Party, the Bristol comedy night run by Pravanya Pillay and Imogen Trusselle, and it heckles the hosts when they take to the stage. Each night has a theme – Las Vegas, Gossip Girl, the gunpowder plot – and lineups include straight standup as well as quirky acts, says Pillay, from poets to clowns pouring cereal over themselves. But is it alternative comedy? “In my head I’m like: ‘Party’s not an alt-comedy night’,” Trusselle says. “But then I remember we’ve based our whole show around this disco ball.”
In Manchester, The Jain Edwards Show is a chat show-cabaret hybrid, with Edwards’ “megalomaniac host” accompanied by house band Foxdog Studios and characters from Jack Evans and Jim John Harkness. Is this alternative comedy? “Initially you use the phrase because you’re told: ‘you’re not mainstream, you’re alternative,’” Edwards says. “It can exclude you from stuff. There are loads of mainstream gigs where I can smash it, but people go, ‘you’re just doing your weird thing over here’.” Pillay agrees: the label can be used to dismiss those who don’t fit an outdated stereotype of what a comedian looks like.
“I go back and forth on whether it’s useful,” says Jordan Brookes, who won the 2019 Edinburgh Comedy award with a show some described as alternative. “If you want to do something different, just do something different. For me, the fun challenge is: how do I get as many people as possible on board with the weirdest thing?”
Since the inception of alternative comedy in 1979 – a scene associated with Alexei Sayle and the Comic Strip, defined by its opposition to the predictability and prejudice of working men’s club comedy – the term persists. “It’s often used in opposition to straight standup, so sketch, character or doing something that hasn’t been done on stage before,” says Oliver Double, head of comedy and popular performance at the University of Kent and author of Alternative Comedy: 1979 and the Reinvention of British Stand-Up.
Charlie Perkins, Channel 4’s newly hired head of comedy, agrees. “But there are people who cross over,” she says. Acts such as Brookes and James Acaster, who play with audience expectations and joke structure, bridge that gap. Double also points to Josie Long’s DIY sensibility, Bridget Christie “challenging established ideas about gender” and Sophie Duker, who makes space for comedians of colour at her night Wacky Racists.
Perkins became head of comedy at Blink Industries (behind shows such as Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared) and was the founder of The Paddock, a multimedia comedy night. “The Paddock is an alternative night because it’s a space where people can try whatever is useful to them,” says Perkins. “More established acts trying something they wouldn’t be able to do elsewhere, or new people trying stuff in front of a supportive crowd.”
There’s a misconception, say both Perkins and Double, that “alternative” is the opposite of mainstream. Even in the 80s, Sayle and the Comic Strip quickly moved to TV. Now, shows such as Stath Lets Flats successfully push TV comedy’s boundaries. “I don’t agree with a binary of: alternative or accessible,” Perkins says. “Comedy is such a broad spectrum. Alternative is a medium not a genre, it’s a way of expressing comedy and trying different things. It’s as broad as people see standup to be.”
Often, it’s about creating something you couldn’t find elsewhere and resisting pressure to appeal to some imagined average viewer. “You can’t assume what someone’s sense of humour is,” Brookes says. “People love weird shit. It’s a thrill to watch someone do something you wouldn’t see another human do in everyday life. It’s exhilarating.”
As Double says in his book, alternative comedy “was supposed to subvert the status quo both artistically and politically”. Perkins says: “We keep moving forward by making stuff that is different, surprising, that you’ve never seen before. That’s why comedy means so much to people, because you’re like: ‘I’ve never experienced this before’.”
Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared, where the creators handmade everything, captured millions of online fans with its original aesthetic and unsettling vibe. “I’d call that alternative in that they were doing something outside of the norm,” Perkins says. “Comedy is an art form and alternative comedy is maybe more embracing of that than straight standup.”
Double says “communal efforts” turned alternative comedy into a scene. During seven years of The Paddock, Perkins has seen comedians find like-minded collaborators. “There’s power in the collective that’s really important in alternative comedy,” she says. “It’s people who are excluded from what is the norm being able to create their own avenues.”
Edwards, inspired by comedy collective Weirdos, coined a name to unite her crew: North Wave. They take a “friendship-first” approach to working together, she says, important when you’re building something from scratch. Pillay and Trusselle wanted to create a community too. “We want to have a fun, silly night that brings in an audience that doesn’t normally go to a comedy show,” says Pillay. That means platforming female, trans and non-binary performers, and having a spot for a person of colour to make their comedy debut with a supportive audience. Similarly, at Alternative Comedy Memorial Society, everyone chants “A noble failure!” in recognition of each act’s bravery.
When live comedy was off-limits during the pandemic, North Wave moved to Twitch. “We thought: comedy could be anything,” Edwards says. “Now if I had to define alternative comedy, it would be taking an alternative route, starting your own thing.”
That DIY approach was embedded in early alternative comedy, says Double, from zine-like posters to homemade props. In London, variety show Piñata concludes with an audience member smashing a homemade piñata while their theme tune plays. The Jain Edwards Show uses creative technology; Edwards’ character recently experienced an immaculate conception thanks to a Foxdog-devised inflatable belly.
Party screens videos made by Pillay and Trusselle. “People like how homemade our stuff is,” Pillay says. “It’s another way of saying: we’re not taking ourselves seriously, we’re having fun. Maybe that’s what alt-comedy is: you don’t have to take yourself seriously, we’re not!”
Double says: “In the same way that punk is a good label even though people disavowed it … although you might have a slightly different idea of what alternative comedy means, it gets you into the ballpark. Alternative comedy is the label that’s stuck, so let’s use that.”
Party: All Stars is at the Edinburgh fringe on 12 August. The Jain Edwards Show is at Grub, Manchester, on 7 July. The Paddock is online from Channel 4. Jordan Brookes is at the Edinburgh fringe, 3-28 August.
