by “My first thought,” says Thanyia Moore, “there was a show.” The comedian talks about what her debut in Edinburgh-Fringe show deals with fun. To collapse as an actor and writer. But then there was an offer of the Soho Theater’s low production, and the chance to prove that she could build an hour stand up from scratch, convinced that she was going to Scotland.
I threw myself into the therapy: breathing work, uterus work, drinking tea, tree hugging
Compared to other debutants who generally fight against financial and professional pressure, Moore felt relaxed. The course of her show was paid, she had had time to finance it, and she had only got some huge personal news under control: she was pregnant. She decided to keep this to themselves, but it simply leaned and rejected other appearances to concentrate on her solo show.
The preliminary views went well. She was excited. Then she showered before her first show and saw blood. Moore recognized the signs: she had already had a miscarriage. What happened next is the topic of August, a show that she will appear in Edinburgh next week, which leads us through the Scottish NHS, her diagnosis of an ectopic pregnancy and to travel to London for operation before storming back to the edge to end her course. It is a show about coping with switching on when the whole world wants you to stop.
In August, Moore reflects her tendency to push loved people away and to search for distractions in work and humor. She ignored concerned news and filled her schedule with up to nine shows a day. There, she said, an element of “Friends and Family wanted to take care of me. But I’m very buried milk – nothing can do anything. The other way was to stay at home with people who tell me that I should rest and ask if it’s okay.
The comedian’s instinct to think about her experience as a future show gave me “relief and lightness”. She gave her short disappearance as a groin injury that suffered during a dance number on the show. And then there were all of Edinburgh’s distractions during the festival. “Someone who is half-naked in the middle of the meadows,” she recalls, “to adult men who walk around in magic outfits. I love the marginal I didn’t have to think about it.
Many weeks later she tried to face her feelings. “I thrown myself into different types of therapy: breathing work, uterine work, tea drinking, tree hud.
She now admits that she mourned. “I had never been bound to become a parents,” she says. “It took forever to get around my head – and now I had to develop it.” There was also the physical side: “I also said: ‘Why doesn’t my body do what to do?’ I am sad when I think, you really went through it – and you just passed it on. “
The work on the show gave Moore space to process. After considering writing it as a theater, she returned to the comedy because she rarely spoke to this topic with humor. “I was obsessed not to make it a sad show,” she says. “My focus was to ensure that the audience felt safe when I wanted them to laugh and feel when I wanted them to feel.” The result is of course funny and yet surprisingly light. “I tell you the truth. And the truth is: ‘I don’t like to be sad all the time.”
Does it feel contradictory to write about an apartment in sadness in a show that revised your experiences for a month? Moore hopes August shows that not everyone mourn the same way, and that’s okay. In the case of preliminary views, the spectators shared stories, not only of miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy. “People have it with the loss of something and continued,” she says. “If your friend is sad, you ask every day” is you doing well? “Reminds her every day that you may not have it.
• Thanyia Moore: August is located in Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, July 30th to August 24th; and Soho Theater, London, 1. September 6th
