There’s no doubt that Ireland has an idiosyncratic culture of remembrance. Try explaining the concept of a traditional Irish ‘wake’ to anyone outside the country, and their faces will visibly attest to the claim. One iteration of this culture is the value we assign to storytelling; a significant form in honouring the dead yet it can oftentimes prove precarious. In some narratives it is fairly common for the dead to take on a life of revised proportions which can warp their image into a portrait of pure sanctity.
Kat Higgins’ brother died twenty years ago, and she is not happy with how he is remembered.
“After anybody dies, people sort of make them an angel. They’re like, ‘oh, you know, they were so sweet and gentle,’ and that kind of pisses me off because it’s not true. It invalidates some of my experiences where he was not that kind and gentle. But also, it sort of is polishing up his memory. It makes him more of a 2D face in a frame than this real person, because real people are flawed. We’re all pricks and we’re all not perfect.”
‘In Memory of Me’ tackles this issue of memory and loss head on in the way that the Irish know best – through humour. Higgins specialised in improv before trying stand-up for the first time in 2019, and finally making her way to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Having received a job as a flyerer, she started moving rapidly up the ranks: by the end of the first week she was running the flyer team, and by the month’s end she found herself producing two shows. Her familiarity and experience behind the scenes ensured that she was well equipped to take on her Fringe run this year round.
Comedy gave Higgins a natural language for her expression of grief due to the mode’s inherent disposition towards honesty and truth. The saintly image that was painted of her brother was hugely misaligned with the reality of her relationship to him. Humour was simply a vehicle for keeping him present in her life: “I would rather speak ill of the dead than not speak of them at all.”
“You know, my brother locked me in my bedroom with my babysitter, and I couldn’t get out. I had to climb out of a window and whatever else. If we’re all just swapping childhood tales, other people are laughing at that going, ‘Jesus, what a bollocks your brother was!’ The minute I tell you he’s dead, sometimes people think, ‘oh God, oh no,’ and I’m like no, no. I still had all these. I want to be able to talk about these memories and them not being sort of quilted in the sadness of his death…Okay, he died, but that was only one part of his story, and one part of my relationship to him.”
Another large part of Higgins’ show touches on her life growing up in Kildare with three brothers – a dynamic that strongly shaped her comic style.
“I talk a lot about being raised Catholic. I sort of say I want to be remembered, but I worry that I’m a bit of a prick. I get it from, I think mainly from my family, but also the Catholic Church… It’s funny, there’s this section of the show where I talk about confession and the concept of what that does, you know, you can just do anything and then apologize and get away with it. The English people are like ‘oh yeah, interesting’ and Irish people are laughing.”
Higgins’ discussion of cultural references gives her apt opportunity to introduce others to Irish cultural gems. For the most part, however, the audience influences which aspects of her jokes receive greater emphasis, or which ones even make the cut.
“I was saying to my friend, sometimes the audience can be a bit like a switchboard, because you can’t always see the full audience. So, it’s almost like the lights go off, and it’s like when I hear laughter at certain points in the room, I go, ‘they’re Irish,’ ‘they’re Catholic’. Everyone laughs initially, but if they keep laughing, that’s because it hit home.”
It is this aspect of performance — being able to bounce off real-time moments in the audience — that Higgins treasures most: ‘I love live. There’s nothing that replaces it. There’s a vibe in the room, there’s a buzz in the room.”
Finally, we turn our conversation to how students can get involved in the world of comedy: “If you have any inclination of wanting to try it, do it while you’re in college…go to an open-mic night. It will lower your expectations immeasurably. Half of the people will be dogshit, and you will probably be dogshit when you start.” Comedy also has the unique benefit of affordability: “The sign-up sheets are open, its free. It’s one of the only art forms that is free at the point of entry. You don’t need to buy a violin; you don’t need to get piano lessons…”
“It is an art form, and you can sign up to an open mic, and you can go and give it a lash. Don’t let your own ego or insecurities get in the way of that, if you really care to give it a go.”
Kat Higgins’ show ‘In Memory of Me’ will run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe until August 30th in Hoots @ Nicholson Square. If you’re not in Edinburgh, fear not, Higgins will be bringing her Edinburgh show to Ireland later this year. Furthermore, Higgins is resident MC in the ‘Pure Gas Comedy Club’ up in 33 South Main in Naas where you can catch her once a month.
