Danielle Krage:

Today I have Stuart Laws with me. Stuart is a writer, director, actor, playwright, and stand-up comedian, and he also runs a production company, Turtle Canyon Comedy. So many areas to dig into. But before we dive in, Stuart, what else should people know about you and your connections to creating comedy?

Stuart:

I guess I’ve been doing it for quite a while now and from what you’ve just listed there, it seems like I’m doing it across a bunch of different areas, which is very, you know, is interesting. I like doing stand-up myself and performing myself, but yeah, also writing and developing things behind the scenes. Yeah, it all seems to sort of crush together in a blend that’s fun and helpful, you know, everything’s helping each other.

Danielle Krage:

Amazing. I love that. I love the image of crushing it and blending it all together, which is perfect. And I’m going to tease some of that apart as we focus on one of your projects. And the one I’d love to start with is a play that you wrote, The Journey.

Stuart:

Hmm.

Danielle Krage:

So many things I’m curious about. I have loads of questions, loads of notes, but can you, first of all, just let us know a little bit about what the premise was and what interested you comedically about that premise.

Stuart:

So the interesting thing, I guess, with the play was that there was two premises happening and there was one that was like the public premise and then there’s the one that was the actual premise. So the public premise and the way that we had to sell the play was that it is a romantic comedy about a breakup that takes place on a spaceship. Whereas the secret premise of it is of a manipulative toxic male creator using stories that aren’t his to tell in order to position himself as a good guy.

Danielle Krage:

Amazing. That makes sense now when I think about some of the reviews that I’ve read where there’s some really super interesting discussions which we can dig into. I love that. I’m going to start on quite a primary level first of all because I have to ask about the setting. You said it’s on a spaceship.

Stuart:

Hmm.

Danielle Krage:

What do you think that setting gave you that you wouldn’t have had comedically if you’d picked a domestic setting?

Stuart:

Yeah, so the inspiration initially for it was I was broken up with by someone whilst on holiday with them. And I, you know, at the time it was tough, but it was okay. But in hindsight, I’m like, that is objectively quite a funny situation to be in, sort of stranded with this person who no longer wants to be in a romantic relationship with you. And then I thought that would be funny if it was at a galactic level where you as a couple are visiting an exploding star on like this supernova spaceship and cannot keep it together long enough to witness something so sort of grand and universe building, as powerful as something like that. So it initially started with sort of a fairly pretentious premise of just like… look at us all so obsessed with our own sort of like narratives that we create that we’re, you know, we’re so miniscule in comparison to what is happening. And it started as a short story and then over the years as I realized, ah man, it’s pretty pretentious stuff. I retooled it and thought this would work well as a play and sort of like as it started to develop the meta level of like the the main character in it is also the that I was like, well, let’s take some of the embarrassing youthful pretension that you put into that short story and start to tease it out in this sort of like two level play of like the romantic comedy, but then also this other level that slowly starts to tease out over the course of the play.

Danielle Krage:

Amazing. I had read that it was originally conceived as a short story and I was curious about that. Is that something that you did much of or are still doing or was that like a one-off thing that you did?

Stuart:

I think for a lot of stand up and, you know, if it’s sort of narrative or scripted like that. There are, so many different ways that it can sort of grow and develop. And there have been like, stand up shows that I’ve written which have been based around a story that I’ve written out and I’ve just spent time writing out that particular story to understand every element of it before then it translates into like a stand-up show where actually all of that story I wrote gets stripped down to maybe five percent of like the funny and the relevant stuff and then the rest of it gets filled in with jokes and everything. But I like to know every detail so that when I’m writing it or if I’m on stage and I’m improvising a bit or developing a bit I know… oh that thing happened and I could tend to talk about that now and maybe that was sparking the new. You know, I want to feel like anything that I make is very coherent and whole and real, even if there’s like half truths in it or outright lies that are designed to sort of propel us from one plot point to another or one joke to another.

Danielle Krage:

I love that. Yeah, that makes so much sense. I’m currently doing a short story challenge myself. It’s inspired by Ray Bradbury, who suggests that you write a short story a week for a year, and if you write 52, then they’re not all going to be 52 bad ones. I think that’s really fun as a way of generating material. And I love the way that you’re describing it as really filling that out and then stripping it back. That’s definitely what I want to do is go back once I’ve done the 52 to just pull out two or three and start mining for bits with in it. That’s super interesting.

Stuart:

Yeah, absolutely. And there’s always like bits within it where you’re like, oh, that’s nothing as a story,

Danielle Krage:

Hmm.

Stuart:

…but there’s like an observation that you arrived at or like a sentence where you’re like, that is something. I can pull that out and it’s like the 1000 words around it are irrelevant. But you would have never have got to that observation if you hadn’t just, you know, without any prejudice or like criticism of yourself, been just writing to just get the story out. Which is difficult because a lot of people want to like write something that arrives fully formed and I understand that sort of pressure Where you’re just like I don’t want someone to accidentally find this document and read it and be like haha This guy’s a loser, but part of the process is writing bad stuff

Danielle Krage:

Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. For myself, I’ve got the parameter that it has to be completed in two hours and then it gets uploaded to my website and even if I look like a total loser or it’s really bad, it has to sit there and then I can come back and mine it. That’s one of the things that I love about comedy is comedians’ willingness to risk those things, to do things that don’t work. And obviously you have so much experience in stand up too, so you must be a genius at that.

Stuart:

Well, I’m a genius at doing things that don’t work.

Danielle Krage:

That’s a kind of skill. It’s really required I think.

Stuart:

Yeah.

Danielle Krage:

That’s amazing. So I want to come back to this public and private in a minute, but before I lose that sideshoot, I want to ask you about how the magical realism or surrealism element works within your bigger picture of comedy. Why do you think you’re drawn to them? And how do you think they fit with comedy in your brain?

Stuart:

That’s a very interesting question and one I did not expect. Congratulations.

Danielle Krage:

I can say more if you like. The reason I’m asking partly is, I think often when people talk about magical realism within fiction… I think it still often has quite a serious, though there might be some delight too, tone….like with people like Isabel Allende or Gabrielle Garcia Marquez. We talk about magical realism in that way. But I think there’s a really interesting vein of magical realism within comedy that isn’t always talked about much and certainly not within fiction or within plays. So I’m interested in why that appeals to you and I’ve also been watching bits of your stand-up and I can see there’s surreality playing in it. So what do you think draws you to that in comedy rather than keeping it as grounded drama with jokes? Like why magical realism? Where’s the play in that for you?

Stuart:

Well, I guess there is an element for a start of drawing a fourth wall with that, which I sort of, you know, you mentioned the public and the private and there’s always these dueling things. I do feel a genuine desire for sort of privacy and to not reveal everything. Like, you know, stand-ups that can get up there and, you know, or like writers or people that can really mine their real life I think that’s amazing. But it’s just not something that I’ve ever been fully comfortable with. The stuff I’m drawn to is the stuff that’s hidden behind the metaphors or like a fantastical situation. I remember years ago reading Etgar Keret, so he’s an Israeli short story writer, and he does sort of magical realism stuff. I was like… Oh, yeah, that’s an interesting way of sort of doing it and expressing a thought in a way that, you know, if people are having an emotion, say, whether it’s a breakup, or it’s the loss of a loved one or something like that, there’s lots of things out there that address that head on. And that’s interesting. And, you know, good to do. But for me, I’m like, Is there a different way that we can take this that it sort of lives away from that emotion? So it has its own grounding. So if it’s like, oh, this is a play about a spaceship that turns out to be about something different, or it’s a stand up show about working in a puffin sanctuary for the summer, which turns out to be actually about something different if you sort of really get into it. But it can also be just enjoyed as a stupid play about a spaceship. That is the sort of stuff that interests me to have the ability for it to sort of live as two things and for someone to be able to enjoy it on that surface level. And then for other people to be like, oh, I think that means that and, and so on. And I think it’s, it’s interesting to just be like, where, how far can you push those sort of things and those discussions or stand up routines or narratives? But yes, is there an actual limit to it? Or will someone go with you on a story because it feels real and it feels truthful, even though it’s obviously about something that’s not true. And I think something feeling genuine to me is more important than a true story. And so, I think that’s a good point.

Danielle Krage:

Oh my goodness, that is such a perfect way to express it. Because when I think of so many of the things that I’ve read and like…For example, I’ve been reading Zen Cho’s short stories recently, and there is quite a lot within the mythology of it of different ghosts and dead characters showing up, and yes, you’ve got this fantastical element, or there’s vampire type characters, there’s dragon type characters, but there’s something that’s incredibly truthful and human that it cuts to as well. So I love the way that you’re talking about that…that it still cuts to the genuine feeling of it, and that mattering more than anything. And that makes sense to me when you’re talking about those metaphors as well. That metaphor, obviously we experience visually or viscerally and it might be quite, you know, an elaborate visual metaphor that’s a hop skip and a jump away from how we describe it in very perfunctory everyday words, but it cuts to what it actually feels like. So I love that. That’s so interesting.

Stuart:

Yeah.

Danielle Krage:

Thank you.

Stuart:

And I think there’s so much of, you know, things that I would say would provoke stronger emotions in me are not like very straight. They’re not like, Oh, bam, here’s a sad video of a thing that’s going to make you cry. And I don’t think that’s, you know, that’s true for a lot of people… where they may be more likely to have a broader range of strong emotions. But like, I think everyone has this where you know, it might be a certain font or it might be a sound or a you know, there’s so many like minute things that are sort of stored away in your brain that can, depending on where you are emotionally, where you are physically, provoke a reaction and I’m interested in yeah, in exploring those sort of details, mainly being trying to be funny. But like, there’s like, a lot of times when I’m trying stuff out on stage where I’m just like, I feel like, yeah, this is an observation. This is the thing that people connect with. And then find out, oh, no, that’s not a thing that other people connect with. I’ll give it another couple of goes. No, it’s not. But weirdly, like, there’ll be like one person or like a couple of people across the gigs who have really connected to that bit. And it’s interesting seeing how that goes and sort of fine-tuning a show, finding those bits and making sure, deciding whether or not it’s a bit that connects with people enough or whether you you can rephrase it to make it connect with enough people or whether it’s literally something where only you care That’s too niche. What is the next thing that we can use to try and explain that emotion or that thing? You know like to I just describe a friend of mine in one of my shows as the sort of person who drinks soft drinks from a mug and it just sticks in my head as like…it’s wrong but it’s unsettling and that’s the sort of thing I’m trying to

create… this sort of unsettling build up. This character as this he does things slightly left of centre, slightly unsettling and you wouldn’t fully trust him but you can’t explain it to other people and when I managed to phrase that enough that it landed with people I was like great cool that is a thing and it sells who that character is in like a sentence

Danielle Krage:

That’s so clever and brilliant. I love that. Fantastic.

So with regards to the public and the private that you mentioned for your play, did you feel that split because of very real considerations like marketing, or was it linked to audience expectations and what you needed to set up, or something else entirely? What was that tension for you?

Stuart:

I think the problem was that it made it incredibly difficult to market because we had to basically market it and the the the Pleasance produced it and took it up and there was such an amazing team and Phoebe Ladenberg directed it and you know, Phoebe Sparrow and Will Brown are in it and were so incredible and so crucial to sort of the development of it that we realized we were in a tough situation. We needed to sell it as an essentially bog standard romantic comedy play. But with like peppy dialogue and a couple of leads that you’re like, haha, they’re funny. And they’re doing a funny thing, because that was necessary for the deception to make the play work. And I think that made some people not like it because they’ve felt deceived and found it difficult. And it also meant some of the most stressful experiences I’ve had with something I’ve written because I remember the first preview of it, some friends of mine coming along and I was sat next to them and basically there’s a point about 25-30 minutes in where it’s maybe even slightly earlier where it’s sort of clear that it’s not a great play and the lead character in it is saying some misogynistic things but like disguised as like funny and the phrasing and the presentation of it is designed to take away all autonomy from the female character. And I had to sit there knowing where it was going, but also feeling like, fuck, my friends think I’ve written a sexist damaging play. And I hope that they don’t walk out at this point because they will never know. Like, it’s like a necessary alleyway to lead down to make the rest of it work.

Danielle Krage:

Yeah, that does sound stressful, but also I think so admirable in terms of the kind of ground that we want comedy to be exploring. And perhaps it’s just that it hasn’t been explored so much in plays. Like we have very typical farces. We have things that may be a rom-com, but it sounds like you are in really interesting territory. And I think it can be so difficult for the creators. I’ve just got to the end of Atlanta season four, which I absolutely loved. And I thought it was such a smart, funny show. show. There was a big Rolling Stone article that came up about Donald Glover. Like, is it misogynoir? It’s like, no, it’s just the way that he was digging into things and in a nuanced way and playing those different games with audience expectations. It’s nuanced and it’s funny and it’s brilliant. So I do really feel for you like balancing those different nuanced considerations. But in some of the reviews that I read, someone said ‘expect to leave discombobulated’, which I thought was amazing. It’s like, you like, yeah, I don’t want to leave a play bored. I want to leave discombobulated. I want to leave having had an amazing experience with loads to talk to my friends about.

Stuart:

Yeah, and that was 100% like what I wanted to do. And I’m like, you know, I felt slightly like a fraud in that I’m not a huge theatre fan. When I’ve seen good plays, I’ve been like, oh, that’s really great. And what I like about a really good play is that it’s doing something that only a play can do. And it’s the same as stand-up. It’s like, why use that particular art form if they’re not going to use that art form to the best of their abilities. Like, if you’re just going to do a play that could just be, could just be filmed, or whatever….let’s find a way of playing with audience expectations and the form in some way. But also, that’s sort of quite a cheeky thing to sort of come in and for your first play be like, haha, I’m going to tear apart all of your rules and stuff that you’ve come up with.

And so working with Phoebe Sparrow and Will Brown who are in it, who are all way more experienced with theatre, was something that was so important to me because I didn’t want to hit the wrong notes and I wanted everyone to leave discombobulated and I wanted everyone to… I wanted some people to come out of it and just truly believe that the play had gone off the rails and that there was an abusive relationship happening on stage in front of them. We had people leave and tell the venue staff that it had gone wrong and they needed to go in there now. And it was interesting sort of getting those reactions because you are going to lead to a situation where someone will vehemently um not want to enjoy it because it will feel potentially triggering and like we did have some trigger warnings in there, but there will be you know, that feeling of just like… this is not the sort of theatre that I signed up for. And that is sort of a deceptive thing to be like, it’s a romantic comedy. But actually, we’re pulling the rug. And it’s actually the last 15, 20 minutes is quite an intense, like, battle of wits of the people you thought previously were characters now being their real life actors, fighting with each other and trying to get the upper hand to own the stage. And you’re wanting this bad guy to get beaten, but it always looks like he’s somehow managed to turn it back on her. And that, yeah, couldn’t have been done without, you know, people helping me at every sort of stage and, you know, bringing their sort of theatrical knowledge to that, because I was bringing a stand-up knowledge to it and like those direct address and those parts were designed deliberately to sort of win the favour of the audience to have the male character, direct address the audience so that you felt the bond with them and then you realise when the female character talks to the audience for the first time when she breaks character that that’s like a moment where you’re like, oh, hang on, we haven’t heard from her yet and now she’s talking directly to us.

Danielle Krage:

Amazing. And I’d love to know, like from that experience, if there’s anything that you think you took in a craft perspective back into the many projects that have followed since then…because it sounds like such an intense and alive and very vibrant experience to have had. Is there anything that you think then informed the work that you’ve gone on to do?

Stuart:

Yeah, definitely. And I think, you know, having an awareness after that, of like how strong a reaction that can be was important. And to try and make sure that… I think for stand-up, it’s way more difficult, especially if like, for me, I’m trying to be an observational comedian, even if I’m doing it in a slightly unusual way. And to try and make sure that the audience are there. And it was something I’d always…that I was getting better and better at, but my show in 2019, Stuart Laws Is All In, I deliberately structured it to, at every opportunity, remind the audience of like what this show is about and where it’s heading, and all of my routines for that were based around the concept of having to make a binary choice. And there are some structural tricks and bits in it which… it’s actually coming out on April 21st as a special on 800 Pound Gorilla so I don’t want to give everything away, but like there are some elements later on in the show, in the special, where they are seeded quite early on and hopefully in this sense it’s holding stuff back from the audience and the show is different to what everyone thinks it’s been the entire time. But I wanted to do that in a more comforting way than I did with The Journey, which was deliberately designed to make you feel like you didn’t know what was happening and whether or not it was real and what wasn’t and things like that.

Danielle Krage:

Oh my goodness, I’m so excited to see your new show. Yeah, don’t tell us any more, but I’m super intrigued. Amazing.

I’d love to switch over to your series that I’ve watched recently, Grave New World. Because I think that it’s so interesting that in different forms of comedy, there can be different playbooks that allow us to do very specific things in a way that sometimes in theatre isn’t quite so well defined and people can be more easily shocked. So how would you describe Grave New World tonally?

Stuart:

Um, Grave New World is…it has the veneer of a current affairs show reporting on the world as we emerge from a pandemic. But it has a sort of a more surreal, sort of an ever more creeping paranoia to it. And it sort of was trying to mainly just make something funny and stupid with friends sort of, you know, in what was a very weird time for everyone. But secondly, to sort of… a part of it was to have that uneasy feeling of not quite knowing what everything meant, which I think is what we were supposed to be doing, which was…especially those first six months, seven months of the pandemic. Just yeah, to create that uneasy sort of, sort of feeling.

Danielle Krage:

I love that. I really enjoyed watching it. It’s so fun.

Stuart:

Thank you.

Danielle Krage:

So many things that I loved about it. And I’d love to know whether there was anything… because it was a….you’re so experienced as a stand up and a playwright, but also as a writer, a director and actor. Like you really have had the industry experience from all sides…But still coming to make Grave New World in that format, as that series… Was there anything that you found surprising about it? Or anything that you had to develop, from a craft perspective to really make sure that you hit the tone that you wanted to.

Stuart:

Yeah, that was… so it’s an interesting mixture of sort of stand-up, sort of monologuing, into like sketches and semi-improvised interviews. And so we have like an amazing cast and my sort of, I also had Alex Keely and Eleanor Morton help write on it as well and sort of scripted it and you know, contribute ideas and write sketches and parts in it. And they’re both in it as well. But part of it was wanting to have like a looseness to it that can be then honed down in the edit. So there was an initial edit of it, which was like an hour and 20 long. And I think it’s now like 53 minutes or 54 minutes across four episodes. But essentially, the structure of it is an Edinburgh show structure of seeding things in at the start, establishing the world, and then letting it slowly unpack over the course of that hour.

But yeah, the improvised sort of interviews were interesting because it was a bunch of people who I’ve, you know, done comedy with. Loads are good friends, and I feel like I wanted to have different people who brought very different energies. So we had Heidi Regan, And then we have Rose Johnson, who’s quite, you know can be a bit more formal and can absolutely hit that sort of cutting, brisk sort of back and forth that we had. And then James Acaster is obviously, you know, well known for everything that he can do. And we have like a natural sort of silliness to us. When then Sadiq Azmat has a very controversial sort of way of sort of talking that I found I find very funny and it was like I wanted all these different elements to sort of come together and we would just run the interviews three or four times and we had like a couple of cue points where I was like this is what I’m going to ask you this is a line that I need you to get in for the larger structure of the show and here’s like a top or a tail that we need to get us in and then to get us back out and into the sort of the semi-narrative of the show and still have it feel natural out of what can be very loose back and forth. And so if we improvised something, I was like, yeah, that’s good, that’s a bit we wanna do, but I need it to be slightly more, yeah, we need to come out of that with more excitement and straight into this bit. Then that way it’ll sort of all flow as if it’s a scripted sort of thing. But yeah, mainly just really fun to just make that sort of stuff with your friends. And to be lucky enough to have a bunch of friends in comedy who are so funny and so willing to sort of go, yeah, great, I’ll come do that and spend a day, you know, filming a variety of different things with you.

Danielle Krage:

Amazing. And I’d love to know how calibrated do you think it is at this point…your sort of spider sense of when you put things on the page… being able to tell how funny it is versus actually then getting it with your friends and testing it out? You said there’s that improv element. I’m curious, for example, in something like your short film Shared Document, how much of that was written before and how much was sort of developed with your co-performer? And also how you’re kind of… at what point are you able to feel the confidence that yes this is working this is funny or this section isn’t working and know how to troubleshoot it. So that’s a very broad

question about basically… how do you tell when it’s working or not when you’re working by yourself and potentially when you’re working with a co-performer?

Stuart:

I find it so much easier now to just know that there’s definitely something in an idea. And I tend to, if I’m previewing, say stand up and there’s an idea that I’m not confident in, I know it’s because it’s not right yet and I will tend to not share them on stage because I know that I can’t make it work yet. Whereas if there’s something that I’m like, there’s definitely something in that…And I think my hit rate on that is much better than it used to and that is literally years of doing bits, understanding what bits are like…Stuart, centric sort of flights of fancy that don’t quite land yet with people.

And so there was a bit that I’ve been trying to work on with my new stand up show for this year, which I just had as an idea a while back. I thought it would be funny to just talk…to do a routine about having a wife, despite not having a wife. And I just knew in my bones that there would be something funny there. And I just sort of threw a few ideas around and couldn’t get it. And then I was literally flying back from a holiday and my brain had been emptied of doing standup. And, you know, I’d sort of stayed out in the wilderness and had a really nice time, and suddenly I was on this flight and I was like, oh, shit, that’s what it is. And got my laptop out and typed out about, I think about 1800 words of an entire routine, which I then did, next day to the best my memory would allow me to do it. And it sort of 75% worked. I was like, okay, so that’s interesting that sometimes you just got to leave it. And you’ve got to just sort of have that idea knocking around and then trust that at some point, it’s going to hit you or a line will hit you, which will spark the next line or something like that. And it’s not trying to force it necessarily.

In terms of something like Shared Document, you know, working with others and developing ideas… That was largely as written, and Jessica Fostekew, fantastic comedian directed that and the reason why I wanted her on that, aside from you know being good friends with her and thinking she’s great, is that what I wanted to have with that a level of sort of realism in that conversation and that dialogue that…when me and Phoebe, who’s my co-star in it, and Jess got on a zoom and we filmed that during lockdown, we would play around with the dialogue and we would play around with being sort of brother and sister and chatting about, you know, the different lines and what they meant and things like that. And I wanted to hand it over to Jess to be like…tell me anything that’s hitting the wrong note. Tell me anything that’s not. And the same with Phoebe, being such an incredible actor….I felt very sort of out of place, sort of acting opposite her. It was such a useful exercise to then go away and to do a redraft so that when we came to it, we could, that there actually was not any improv in the recording, and that the improv was done beforehand.

And then the redraft happened. And then that was what we locked in. Because I think it was something like that, which was, it’s quite tightly sort of, It’s a set piece sort of film and it’s a horror, but it’s also an emotional thing about grief that it needed to not deviate, it needed to

hit all the marks it needed to hit at the right moment so as to make the end scary and unsettling

and to some people, I think I did read a review of it that they didn’t like the ending because they felt it was a cop out. Whereas in my mind, the ending is deliberately not revealing what exactly has been haunting these people because that’s what grief is. It’s something that you don’t fully comprehend and understand. But it’s always there and you could just turn around and suddenly be staring it in the face sort of thing.

Danielle Krage:

I love that. And I think that links back so closely to some of the things that you were saying at the beginning of the interview about how you.. it’s actually how you want to transmute what grief feels like in different ways more than say… this is exactly what it’s like and this is exactly what’s happening. That makes so much sense to me. And that’s also what I took from the film and I’ll make sure that there’s a link to that in the show notes too.

So I’m going to zoom out a little bit. Because I know that you’re also you run a company, Turtle Canyon Comedy. How do you have the time to do that as well? I don’t know, but that’s another question.

Stuart:

No idea. Haha.

Danielle Krage:

But I’d love to know. Because you have that perspective too, if there’s any things that you think…that broader industry perspective gives you in terms of craft that you just didn’t have before you were that fully involved in the production company. Iif you can remember back to a time where maybe you were a writer and a stand up before you added all these extra hats. What have you learned now that actually helps you when you sit down?

Stuart:

Yeah, weirdly, the production company is something that’s existed since I was 18.

Danielle Krage:

Oh, I did not know that.

Stuart:

Me and a friend formed it out of school because we loved making short films and we were offered a job at an old school of ours to help teach the kids how to make films. And we were like, oh, wow, we could do that as a business and that could fund all of the stuff we want to make. And weirdly, 20 years later, that is still what we are doing. And there’s a third member of the team now. And we’ve got such an amazing, you know, gang of freelancers who work with us so regularly. We’ve sort of over the years sort of honed and sort of found people that you know resonate with us and have a similar sort of desire to just make stuff. And I think that is the thing that unites everyone that ends up working with us you know.

Obviously, there’s sometimes… you do a corporate job because you’ve got to pay a bill or something like that Or you know you work on a job that maybe it’s not the ideal thing or you’re so busy It’s difficult to sort of make sure you focus on everything… and the thing that always I have to sort of let slide is my own personal you know stand up or things like that. So there will sometimes be periods of time where I won’t gig for like a month or so because I need to focus on the company but what’s been so great is making that decisionyears ago now to really focus in on comedy, because you know I was meeting some really interesting people doing comedy back in like 2010, 2011, and was like… I’d like to make stuff with these people and to have them grow as standups. And for the company to grow and us, you know, to make really cool things together is such a great way for me to like work closely with people on like stand-up shows or like scripts that are like their pride and joy. And to understand how other people work and to sort of take sort of like, you know, things that certain people do and be like, that’s a really interesting way of doing it and that’s exciting thing and you know to apply what I’ve learned from like working in theatre or working with actors in a theatre setting to then… how you would direct actors or you know performers in a filmed situation and you know what are the stresses and what are things that actors need or writers need to feel like they are good because basically If they feel good, they’re going to be more likely to be confident to try stuff. And in my mind, trying things is going to be, you know, the way that you find an exciting new way of doing something or find an extra level to the thing you’re doing. And I think doing acting things myself has also given me a good perspective. You know, as I said at the start, crushing it all together and blending it and giving different perspectives. It’s just very useful. And I hope that I can carry on doing many of these different things together for as long as I can. But every year I just think to myself, okay Stuart, you need to cut one of these out now because you’re not getting any younger and you’re not sleeping any more than you used to.

Danielle Krage:

That’s amazing. As you were saying, I was like, yeah, we’re definitely back to the blender. And I love the blender. I think it’s, that’s how you make new things, how you make new smoothies, new good comedy stuff. That’s awesome.

Stuart:

Yeah, yeah.

Danielle Krage:

I’d love to wrap up with advice. Any advice that you’ve been given that you found really helpful or you do find yourself applying?

Stuart:

So there’s a few, I mean, obviously number one is be happy to fail. I think that is really important and be happy to make something and not put it out. Be happy to just sort of make something that you’re like…that was really useful, but it’s also useful for it to not go out. Like sometimes people get too attached to something like they’ve got to get it out there, even though they know in their heart they’re not fully happy with it. But like to know that even just by making it and it not working out quite as you like, and as what you wanted, you will have learned something from that if you stay open to to that. So it’s yeah, it’s so difficult because you want everything to be perfect and to get everything out there, but the gigs that I’ve done that have sort of changed things the most for me have been bad gigs and the shows that… You know going to Edinburgh in 2017 with a show that was working so well in London, and at previous festivals and to take it to Edinburgh and four days in, I’m like…it’s not working. And being okay with that. And then just being like, right, fifth day, let’s pay more attention to why it’s not working. So yeah, it’s, and that led to me being able to fix it. And then have a really good rest of the run. So yeah, understanding that failing will make it better if you open to that.

And what was the other thing? Oh, just be aware of like…When an audience is watching something, they’re so much more astute than sometimes people will, I don’t know, sort of assume. And by providing information, an audience will genuinely, will generally be like, oh, okay, so, oh, they go to a gym on a Wednesday. Right, so that must be relevant. Yeah, this is all happening in the background in their brains. So don’t give out information. Don’t put things in that are not completely relevant. And like sometimes you’re like, I need to fill out this character or this needs to feel more like it’s full of life. But actually, the more things like that that go in without a purpose, or you know, in stand up, it’s simple, you just make sure that it’s funny. And then you’re, you’re fine, you can get away with it. But it’s making sure that you’re not adding extraneous details because you’re attached to that particular aspect of that character or that particular aspect of that storyline or something like that.

Danielle Krage:

That’s great advice. Thank you. Oh my goodness, you give me so much to think about. I could talk to you for another two hours, but we’re going to stop there.

Stuart:

Thank you.

Danielle Krage:

But before I say goodbye, I’d love to know where should people go to if they want to find out more about you and your work. And of course, I will put these links into the show notes too.

Stuart:

I think the simplest one probably is just Linktree or, so that’s… Stuart Laws comedy. But Stuart Laws comedy across Instagram, TikTok, and Linktree or my website, StuartLaws.com, but that’s so difficult to update. Wix is, I’m with Wix and I want to say Wix, if you’re listening…Your platform is very difficult to, it keeps crashing, so could you sort that out?

Danielle Krage:

Okay, good. I’m glad that we’ve got that public service announcement in. I’ll second that. Amazing. Thanks so much for your time today, Stuart.

Stuart:

Thank you very much for having me.