Is Art-Comedy the new Alternative Comedy?
With alternative comedy heading into the mainstream more and more, have Su Mi, Rosa Garland and Ellen Turnill Montoya stumbled upon the new alternative-alternative comedy?
“Okay I'm just talking on a mic... but what if I come in with a shark head? That'll be better, no?” says Su Mi, who brings THISMOTHERPHUCKER to the Fringe. Sitting in the alternative comedy realm, Su describes their work as ‘anti-clown’, a term they coined to express their “anarchical feeling” towards the clown comedy genre that is everywhere at the festival. They’ve also played with performance art, drag and have a BA in Fine Art.
To them, clown is “an art form which I love in my own personal way, but it has a lot of systemic issues tied with it, be that it is represented mostly in the comedy world by white, thin, able-bodied people. I’m not that at all. I'm a chubby Asian person in a skin-tight morph suit. Which I feel is pretty punk in itself.”
Primal Bog, “a clown and live art mashup” from Rosa Garland, sounds similarly punk. It’s “a disgusting, grotesque but hopefully beautiful journey into the depths of sexual shame, desire, undoing, and taboo around our desires.” And if treading the line between those two genres and discussions of kink and sexual shame weren’t radical enough, Rosa’s getting tattooed on stage every day as part of her show too.
Completing our trio is Ellen Turnill Montoya, who leans heavily into the visual art side of art-comedy. “I started out doing pretty typical stand-up, which I feel is the classic visual art journey too – you’ve got to start drawing a bowl of fruit to understand the rules first before it turns into a full-blown abstract installation.” She then turned to improv, clown and bouffon for her comedy fix, before starting to merge visual art with her comedy. It all clicked for Ellen when she was “doing a strip tease to Chaka Khan’s I'm Every Woman, revealing different illustrated women over my body and clothes and changing the lyrics to match.”
Ellen’s comedy is visual, front and centre. Her debut show, Mr Handsome, started life as a sketch. “I was trying to work out what this idea or character was and first made a series of illustrations that turned into WhatsApp stickers I could send to my friends. He started life as a little hand character doing a high five, a thumbs up,” and is now Ellen on stage dressed as a giant hand.
Ellen Turnill Montoya as Mr Handsome. Photo: Rob Trendy
Both Rosa and Su come at their comedy with a visual art brain too. “An image will pop into my head and I'll be like 'how do I create that?' but I think as a performer, I'm a bit more wired to stress when I don't get a laugh,” says Rosa. “I'm hard-wired from my clown training and doing clowning to be like 'Err, they didn't laugh, they hate me, they hate me.' So I come at it from that brain first I think, and over the process of this show I'm learning to embrace this spaciousness with the audience.”
For Su, “Sometimes the comedy comes later,” and it’s the visual that strikes. Recently, they bought a bin lid to make something funny with, and now there’s a table involved as well. “I don't want to give too much away but it might involve eating my head.” Count us in!
One of their biggest inspirations comes from the fine art world. For their art foundation course, Su dressed up as neighbours on their street, adopted their personalities and recorded it. “One time I dressed up like this really old man on our street (I hope he’s still alive), and I was in the garden. My mum opened the curtains and started screaming, so I started screaming. I burst into the house because I thought ‘something has obviously happened, let me try and help’ and scared her even more.” The penny dropped and the pair fell into fits of laughter. “So Tracey Emin made me do that. Thanks Tracey.”
Finding cult comic Emo Phillips at a young age was also a revelation. “I remember looking at him thinking, 'What a freak. He looks like me. I like him!' I literally wanted to be a comedian since I was 15 and he was the first inspo I got.” Su also cites some classic alt comedy too: “I watched The Goodies, Mighty Boosh, Monty Python, they were the OGs of freaky stuff, and comedy intertwined with art as well.”
Rosa’s key influences share an unlikely common theme: stunt. First is Austrian choreographer and performance artist Florentina Holzinger. Famed for bringing body horror to ballet with nudity, meat hooks and motorbikes (that’s just her work, Tanz), she pushes bodies to their limits while making her audience laugh. “She definitely doesn't do comedy shows, but they are funny, they have a lot of humour in them,” Rosa says. “I saw [Tanz] just at the start of this Primal Bog process. I already knew that I wanted to make a clown show about kink and that was one of the inciting incidents for moving the show forward.”
And on the other end of the stunt spectrum are Steve-O and his wild mates. “It's really funny cos there's quite extensive academic writing about Jackass in the performance arts space which I love.” The big dumb pranks are appealing (“I love a classic Portaloo being swung around with someone inside”), but for Rosa, “the one that made me the most stressed or gave me the biggest reaction was when Steve-O got pulled along as bait in front of a mako shark.” As a self-confessed shark nerd, she was worried for their safety. “'Guys, mako sharks are the fastest shark',” she exclaimed to her friends, deadly seriously.
There’s a similar slapstick element to one of Ellen’s influences. “My main love and inspiration is, was, always has been, always will be, Jim Henson and The Muppets.” Jackass’s big high five prank and Miss Piggy’s karate chops feel like two sides of the same coin. “I can’t remember a time without them in my life. At the moment, my favourite era is the original 1970s show monster skits. Surreal and weird, but always warm.” She’s also inspired by SNL player and one-time Fringer Sarah Squirm (“her gross out and garish world made me realise you could really do [comedy] in your own way”), while citing ex-SNL-er Julio Torres as “the most exciting comedic voice” right now. “As a British-Mexican myself – seeing a surreal comedic world (and in SPANGLISH!) was, and is, so incredible and liberating.”
But in the creation of Mr Handsome, Ellen’s biggest inspiration is big-headed buffoon, Frank Sidebottom. “I went to an exhibition of Frank and all the visual world around him a few years ago in Manchester and it blew my mind (an image from that show has been my phone lock screen until this day). Not only the character, but the extended illustrated everything that he exists within.” Maybe one day Ellen will get to open for Bros at Wembley Arena on their next reunion tour too.
Fusing art with comedy isn’t a new thing, just look at Vic Reeves, Kim Noble, and Simon Munnery’s Cluub Zarathustra for starters, but it is interesting that it’s back thriving in those alternative circles. But is it the alternative to the alternative?
It’s more about growing tired of plain old stand-up for Su. “Sitting through an hour of stand-up sometimes... I like when there's more,” they say. “Unless there's some sort of trinket or ornament, I just get bored.” The adornments which come with art-comedy seem to relieve the predictability of some comedy.
Rosa argues that the distinction between live art and comedy is particularly blurry, but “audiences are enjoying the kind of challenge that more live art comedy brings.” It brings high art into more accessible spaces and gives live art “a home in a place of sheer silliness... It's sort of that high art and low art stuff together that tastes good as well.”
Ellen’s excited by the prospect of even more art in alternative comedy. “I think performance art comedy has always been the alternative-alternative comedy,” and with a growing number of nights and spaces to experiment, there are more “places to play with the unexpected.” She’s also very thoughtful about the visual art side of things: “Maybe what’s changing now is the access to design tools and the democratisation of that has enabled more people to express their ideas visually,” and credits that with her drive for Mr Handsome to be as hand-made as possible.
But however art-comedy falls within alternative comedy, Rosa puts it most succinctly. “I might get booted out the live art community for saying this, but isn't it all just doing weird stuff at the end of the day?”
More alternative-alternative comedians
Problem? In 2023, Julia Masli narrowly lost out on the main Fringe comedy award with ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, a raucous, joyous and uplifting blend of comedy, clown and performance art. She’s back with a limited late(ish) night run of her brilliant show (Pleasance Dome (Queen Dome), 11-24 Aug, 11.15pm, £18-20).
Although it’s technically in the theatre section, Sam Kissajukian’s 300 Paintings (Summerhall (Main Hall), 31 Jul-25 Aug (not 12,19), 12.05pm, £10-17) is an exploration of the Aussie comedian’s mental state through, you’ve guessed it, 300 paintings, created in a six-month manic episode from an abandoned cake factory.
The creator of 2024’s cultiest Fringe show Mark Dean Quinn returns once more to Banshee Labyrinth after midnight (PBH’s Free Fringe @ Banshee Labyrinth (Cinema Room), 2-24 Aug, 1.50am, Free/PWYW). Last year’s show saw the comic eat reams of cheese in front of a rapt audience. Can it get any grater?
Su Mi: THISMOTHERPHUCKER, Underbelly Cowgate (Iron Belly), 31 Jul-24 Aug (not 12,19), 6.40pm, £8.50-12.50
Rosa Garland: Primal Bog, Assembly Roxy (Downstairs), 30 Jul-24 Aug (not 12), 9.50pm, £9-14
Ellen Turnill Montoya is Mr Handsome, Assembly George Square Studios (Studio 4), 30 Jul-24 Aug (not 12, 19), 5.20pm, £8-12