“Do you ever worry that you’re deluded?” asks Chris Rutter. “Because you meet acts that probably are. Maybe I’m deluded?”
Backstage at The Stand Comedy Club in Glasgow, five of Scotland’s best up-and-coming comics, Rutter, Ifrah Qureshi, Matthew Gallagher, Amanda Dwyer and Jack Brookmyre, have just been previewing routines from their forthcoming Edinburgh Fringe hours. Beneficiaries of a sponsorship scheme the club has set up backing home-grown talent, the five are being assisted with Festival mentorship, marketing and expenses. One of a growing number of bursaries created to help newer acts with the Fringe’s spiralling financial costs, The Stand’s support is psychological as much as financial. Gallagher voices the insecurity and imposter syndrome that can ambush even the most successful performer: “What?! These five?!”
Yet Rutter asserts that if it wasn’t for the sponsorship, he wouldn’t be debuting at the Festival. Acknowledging the “confidence boost” it’s given him, the Grimsby-raised, Falkirk resident points to the success of a similar scheme, the Brass Tacks Debut Fund, which saw last year’s recipient, Ayo Adenekan, scoop a writer’s role on Saturday Night Live UK after his first Fringe run.
Qureshi, similarly, wouldn’t be making the leap to an hour without the initiative, describing it as “really validating”. Despite all five of the comics living in the Central Belt, the economic costs of staging a Fringe show remain considerable. And the Glasgow-based stand-up believes that the wider public still don’t quite appreciate the demands and sacrifices involved. How it can “seem so unaffordable, such an investment”. Without the backing of producers or an agency, “you really have to back yourself”.
“To have someone say, actually, we think you should be going to the Fringe [is so important]. Being recognised by The Stand is a dream come true,” she explains. “A home of comedy, thinking you’ve got something funny and worthwhile to share.”
Winner of this year’s Sir Billy Connolly Spirit of Glasgow Award for reflecting the city’s rascally humour, Dwyer is a Fringe veteran by comparison, performing her third Festival show with The Stand. Despite commuting each day, taking time away from her teaching job, she anticipates this being the first time that she won’t make a financial loss. That’s freeing her up to just focus on her show, “with such a weight off, not worrying about making enough money to cover my transport or the cost of my flyers.”
For Brookmyre, likewise, the “ringing endorsement” counts for plenty. Not least because the chance to perform twenty-four nights more or less straight through, is a tremendous opportunity to develop. “By the end of the Fringe, the show will be different,” after “constant tweaking,” he predicts. Crucially for the Glaswegian stand-up and impressionist, it’s a chance for him to gauge the “universality” of his voices in encounters with international audiences. Shared cultural references are getting harder to identify in the diffuse, digital age. So “if something’s working at the Fringe, you know it’s really broad and it’ll ring true for a greater variety of people,” he suggests.
The weight of The Stand’s endorsement has certainly made Rutter “raise his game”. And Gallagher empathises. His show is titled Last Minute, only slightly tongue-in-cheek. “Because that’s when I usually leave things until.” A freewheeling act who affects outrage at being billed as a “fool” or “buffoon”, the Glaswegian is nevertheless steeped in the history of modern stand-up and knows he can’t afford to “wing” his debut.
“The biggest test for me will be having a 90 – 95 % structurally consistent show [every night],” he reflects. “Doing a service to the actual art and craft of writing stand-up. I’ve walked on stage, the ideas in my head are good. I’m a god in there. But that’s nothing unless I put the work in expressing them.”
Qureshi’s show is about power dynamics. Regarding audiences, critics and fellow comics, she maintains that, “if you’re a stand-up comedian, you have a kind of fucked-up relationship with validation from other people”. Unlike other art forms, live comedy demands instant “public judgement”. And that can prompt agonising second-guessing.
“The first few times you’re in a room full of people that think you’re funny, you can maybe make some excuses, like ‘oh, they were just hammered and would have laughed at anything’,” Brookmyre reasons. “But if it happens enough times, eventually you start to believe in yourself.”
Yet, “always in the back of your mind, you’re thinking ‘maybe they were just pretending’. That a rug’s going to be pulled from under you because this entire time they were all faking it. That it’s all been an elaborate prank.”
Comedians in Scotland continue to be overlooked for Festival awards and find it harder to get reviewed. That’s a consequence, Dwyer ventures, of “Fringe venues openly prioritising and giving the good spots to English acts coming up,” with powerful agencies able to dictate favourable terms for their roster. Fortunately, the quintet agree that comedy north of the border is a nurturing environment, with Rutter praising the “ecosystem.”
“You cross paths with acts that are London-based and they’ll say it’s nicer up here,” he observes. “The headline-level comics are generally supportive and they want to encourage you.” Qureshi had heard “all kinds of scary stories”. But she believes the scene has “definitely evolved” from the “man’s club” it once was. Everyone is “very forthcoming, very supportive and it’s technically very accessible,” she says. “You just turn up to an open mic, do your five minutes and hope they like you”.
Dwyer, too, speaks warmly of the more established performers that helped her with advice and gig lore when she was a new act. And she’s keen to pay that forward.
“I try to do that for people who are just starting out as well. Because I think it’s daunting, a pure daunting, scary thing to come in and not know anybody, everyone comes in completely on their own. You’re always just trying to make connections.”
Chris Rutter: Ignorance is Chris, The Stand Comedy Club, 6-30 Aug (not 17), 4.35pm
Ifrah Qureshi: 48 Flaws of Power, The Stand Comedy Club, 6-30 Aug (not 17), 8.15pm
Matthew Gallagher: Last Minute, The Stand Comedy Club, 6-30 Aug (not 17, 21, 22), 8.50pm
Amanda Dwyer: Better Than Revenge, The Stand Comedy Club, 6-30 Aug (not 17), 6pm
Jack Brookmyre: Impressionable, The Stand Comedy Club, 6-30 Aug (not 17), 6.55pm