Tell us about the show you’re bringing to Blizzard Comedy’s Mini-Fringe All Dayer.
Hello! Speak Now Or Forever Hold Your Peace is an unhinged hour of marital chaos. I play an unnamed, demented bride as she giddily waits at the altar for her darling groom Nathaniel to marry her and for everything to be okay forever. The vibes are Waiting for Godot through the lens of David Lynch, with shades of gothic horror and sweeping romance thrown in there. There is puppetry, a dream ballet, and a banquet of lemons. Your standard wedding, really.
What inspired you to write a stand-up show set at the wedding altar?
Weddings are such bizarre rituals, aren’t they? I’m nearly 30, and a lot of people I know from school are getting married now. There’s been a bit of a resurgence in people getting married young, and I think there’s definitely something to explore in that.
The roles people play at weddings too is so perfect for audience interaction. In the show, I get members of the crowd to be my bridesmaids, the best man, the vicar and other attendees.
The idealised perfect wedding has such potential to explore the uncanny and surreal. As a queer, perpetually single transfemme goblin, I feel the Hetero Wedding is such an open goal to set a show in and to distort the tropes.
What’s your process for finding the humour in deep subjects like love and loss that you explore in this show?
I think by making it as BIG as possible. The Bride loves and experiences heartbreak to such a melodramatic degree, she is THE Bride. She is the manifestation of all the love and unspoken regret that every wedding is made of. I hope people can find themselves in her earnest messiness.
How do you go about balancing the profound and the silly in this show?
I do it by really, ferociously committing to the silly and by letting the profundity really speak for itself. There are moments I’m working on for this show that I feel may genuinely confuse people, but I want people to draw their own conclusions. I personally put a lot of heartbreak, transfemme rage and dreaming into this show, but I cannot wait to find out what other people get out of it.
What’s your technique for creating such successful absurdist humour?
Juxtaposition. My first show PLANETS!!! was an exercise in charm, making the extraordinary (space travel) into something ordinary, a frenetic cosmic cabaret through the chaos of a child’s bedroom. This is about taking a rite of passage, a wedding, and just completely fucking it up. The last thing you’d expect a bride to do is whip out sock puppets or start gorging on lemons, yet here we are. Establish a world and slowly break its rules, bit by bit.
What do you hope people take away from your show?
I want people to laugh at and with the Bride, to doubt her, to feel a certain unease, and then to feel such sorrow for her. She is a monstrous figure, but one who has a deep desire to be loved. I don’t want people to walk away thinking “that was OK”, and just immediately start scrolling again. I want people to have had a transformative experience, which sounds ludicrously ambitious, but if I’m not shooting for the moon, why would I even be here?
How are you feeling about being a part of Blizzard Comedy’s Mini-Fringe All Dayer?
I am so excited! I’ve been wanting to bring an hour show to Manchester (and the North in general) for ages now. The stars have just aligned so perfectly!
I’m particularly excited by the lineup, Leslie Ewing-Burgesse & James Ross are always such a delight to watch. This’ll be my first time seeing Hannah Platt and Eryn Tett! It feels genuinely very exciting and like a meaningful, accessible alternative to Edinburgh.
What are your hopes for this show going forward?
I am spending the spring and summer WIPping it into shape. It will then enter surgery in the autumn ready to take 2027 by storm. I am hoping to bring it to Edinburgh next year for a full run, ideally in a late night spot when the lines between dream and reality get a little hazy.
I hope it gets universal acclaim, wins a million awards and tours the globe, but realistically, I’d just love the right people to come see it and to connect with it. I’d quite like to make some kind of short film out of Speak Now, but that’s a conversation for another day!
Do you have any advice for anyone hoping to create their own full-length fringe comedy show?
Just do it. Do the thing. Pursue the fear of trying something different, and don’t play it safe. Not in a Ricky Gervais “ughh you can’t say anything these days” type of way, but life is too short to not take risks. Whatever happens in that hour between you and an audience is a sacred, alchemical space. You genuinely have the potential to inspire, tickle, comfort and devastate them in equal measure. Don’t make them want to reach for their phone.
There is an idea in your head that is dying to be released. Release it.
Cameron Sinclair Harris is performing Speak Now Or Forever Hold Your Peace at Blizzard Comedy’s Mini-Fringe All-Dayer at Gullivers NQ on Sunday 14th June.
Tickets are free with the option to pay what you’d like on the door. Book your seat here.
