12-18 Aug 2017^ guide^18
American gagbuster
After writing gigs on Late Night With Jimmy
Fallon, will Sara Schaefer be Edinburgh’s latest
break-out comedy star? James Kettle reports
osing control of your
bladder in a grocery store.
Being bullied at school for
using men’s deodorant. Getting
posture problems as a result of
walking with a constant stoop to
hide your flat chest. These and
other harrowingly embarrassing
tales are the stock-in-trade of
Sara Schaefer, the latest potential
US comedy superstar to head to
the Edinburgh festival f ringe.
In recent years, Trevor Noah
and Michael Che both played
the fringe as near-unknowns
before getting their current
jobs at The Daily Show and SNL
respectively. Schaefer could well
be set for similarly great things.
She’s certainly got a sensibility
that – despite it s obvious
authenticity – might have
been expressly tailored for the
times. There’s a weary , beyond-
her-years sarcasm that’s very
millennial-friendly, and manifests
itself in cutting demolitions of
awful contemporary norms.
“Have you heard of ‘sideboob’,”
she used to ask in her sets. “It’s
when a celebrity wears a T-shirt
with a gaping hole on the side.
It has to be a celebrity. When a
regular person does this, they’re a
piece of trash.” But along with the
plain speaking, she’s got a nerdy,
Bambi-on-ice awkwardness that
softens her edges and makes
her hugely lik able. In common
with many Americans abroad,
Schaefer is struggling with the
embarrassment of being seen as
an ambassador from the land of
Trump. Her show at Edinburgh
is called Little White Box, which
L
she hastens to point out is not
a reference to her vagina: “It
actually refers to a religious
poem. I get the double meaning
but I’m not thinking about that.
I don’t mention my vagina once
in the whole show.” In fact, it’s
an exploration of the Trump-era
state of the union. “It’s trying
to make sense of how I feel
about being an American right
now,” she says.
There wi ll also be plenty of
the graphically personal and
confessional material that’s long
been part of Schaefer’s shtick.
In the past, she has talked about
how a desire to experiment with
rough sex ended with her getting
accidentally clobbered by a lover
(“I needed a safe word. I have one
now. Turns out my safe word is:
‘Don’t punch me’”). This more
explicit material is an awkward
fit with Schaefer’s upbringing in
Virginia. “I was raised a Southern
Baptist,” she says. “There are a lot
of comedians who are incredibly
cool and who never express any
sincere emotion. And I come
from a background of ‘Show
your emotion! Lay yourself down
before the Lord!’” Schaefer’s
introduction to comedy came
through listening to her brother’s
tapes of Andrew Dice Clay and
Eddie Murphy (“Really dirty!
To Southern Baptists, it felt
like contraband”). Her love of
comedy was a constant through
her childhood and provided
a defence against teasing : “I
figured out pretty early on in
sixth or seventh grade that if I
made fun of myself for being a