A giant sentient disco ball sits in the front row at Party, the Bristol comedy night run by Pravanya Pillay and Imogen Trusselle, and it heckles the hosts when they take to the stage. Each night has a theme – Las Vegas, Gossip Girl, the gunpowder plot – and lineups include straight standup as well as quirky acts, says Pillay, from poets to clowns pouring cereal over themselves. But is it alternative comedy? “In my head I’m like: ‘Party’s not an alt-comedy night’,” Trusselle says. “But then I remember we’ve based our whole show around this disco ball.”
In Manchester, The Jain Edwards Show is a chat show-cabaret hybrid, with Edwards’ “megalomaniac host” accompanied by house band Foxdog Studios and characters from Jack Evans and Jim John Harkness. Is this alternative comedy? “Initially you use the phrase because you’re told: ‘you’re not mainstream, you’re alternative,’” Edwards says. “It can exclude you from stuff. There are loads of mainstream gigs where I can smash it, but people go, ‘you’re just doing your weird thing over here’.” Pillay agrees: the label can be used to dismiss those who don’t fit an outdated stereotype of what a comedian looks like.
