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“I loved travelling abroad… now I can’t be bothered.”
With her headline tour now underway, Jen Brister speaks to Reading Today about pride, performing, and the point of no return for a gag.
JEN BRISTER has just set out on her latest string of stand-up dates with her headline tour, The Optimist, kicking off in her home city of Brighton.
Jen says that she loves living by the sea: “I mean that never gets old, it’s so lovely.
“Brighton is liberal, easy-going, and it’s kind of got everything I need on my doorstep: the Downs, the the cafes, the bars, the theatres, and the comedy.
“I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything, which was my biggest fear when I moved out of London.”
The tour is called The Optimist, which is a slightly misleading title considering the oft-disappointed angle her stand-up can take, which Jen readily admits.
“It’s not something you’d associate with my stand-up, optimism, and I was struggling to find anything to be optimistic about,” she says.
“So I thought that I would write a show called that and anyone who’s seen me doing stand-up will find it funny because I’m usually quite cynical.”
The optimism about Brighton, however, is hard won: “I think you could get a little bit jaded about where you live.
“And then you travel the country and you think ‘yeah I’m very happy with it, actually.’
“There’s very few places in this country that I haven’t been to over the years, because I’ve been doing stand up for such a long time, touring, but also before that I was a jobbing circuit comedian.
“But as you get older, the novelty does become lessened.”
She says that as a slightly younger comedian: “I really enjoyed the the travelling side of stand-up– I thought it was so exciting to be able to go to different places every weekend.
“I loved travelling abroad, performing in places like Australia, South-east Asia, around Europe– now I can’t be bothered.
“It takes it out of you, not really sitting still that long, so it’s both a priviledge and a pain in the arse.”
Jen performed at South Street Arts Centre in September, a show which sold out almost as quickly as it was announced, and is returning to the venue on Friday, February 3.
“There used to be a club night there that I performed at a few times– I think it was there for a couple of years, but it wasn’t always that busy.
“But the audience was really great; Reading always just seems to be really up for it, because some places can feel like they’ll be grim.
“But Reading is up for it, which as a comedian is great.”
Having an audience willing to take leaps with a comedian can lead to material which takes risks, she says.
“My audience tends to sort of trust me enough to know that even if they’re feeling like we’re in unsafe territory, ultimately it works out in the end.
“And I feel quite fortunate like that, that they know I won’t say anything too dreadful and they won’t be walking out.
“But you go to places when you’re touring where you think they want to see you– you want it to be fun.”
The show itself, Jen says, was: “quite a journey– the refining is the bit of the process I really enjoy, with previews,
“When you’re looking at a blank page and you’ve got nothing, it’s the worst– but when you’re rearranging, you’re playing with something that already exists, gagging it up.
“Then you can have fun.”
But there’s also an editorial aspect to the process which she says can be difficult: “Sometimes you get attached to material which just never really lands that well.
“And you have to say that you’ve flogged a dead horse long enough.”
For many performers, she says: “There’s always a piece of material that you’re like ‘I know there’s something here, but I for whatever reason, it’s just not working.’
“Sometimes you get to the point where you have to leave it, but maybe you come back to it, maybe five or six years later, and boom– you find it.
“Sometimes it comes to you on stage, and sometimes you just have to drop it in the bin.”
Whatever the jokes, though: “It has to come, for me, from a place of honesty.
“I made a decision early on when I started that whatever I chose to do it would have to come from that place of truth.
“For me to do that meant being upfront about my sexuality, for example, which I got a bit of stick for in those days.
“People always asked why I mentioned being a lesbian, why I made a ‘big deal’ about it, why it was important.
“And I don’t think I knew how to respond then, but why not?”
Now she says that visibility is important: “It’s important not only to make sure that not just other queer people are able to see me and feel safe and know that they’re not alone.
“But to normalise it to other people that might fear it– they’re confronted by the fact that I’m making them laugh, and suddenly that fear disappears because we’re making a connection.
Now more than ever, she says: “We have the priviledge to disappear, even with this ‘war’ against woke.
“What does that mean? It means ‘we fear difference,’ and that fear is at war against society– it’s a nonsense.
“As a performer, whether you’re in a band, an artist, a comedian, doing it with pride is so important.”
“And I choose to do that not only because I can, and because I absolutely want to, but because I have to.”
While Jen Brister’s live tour dates have sold out in Reading, you can find her other upcoming tour dates including those in Oxford, London, Aldershot, and Brighton, online at: www.jenbrister.co.uk/tour/, or sign up to the mailing list to hear about future dates.
