Leeds man preparing for Edinburgh Fringe performances with comedy show about grief

In 2019, he lost his dad to bowel cancer and less than two months later, his marriage ended.

A performance poet and theatre artist by trade, Chris drew upon his skillset to channel his emotions into a one-man comedy show.

"It was this absolute write-off of a year, one of the worst periods of my life," he said. "So I thought, what does any normal person do in this situation? Well, they obviously write a comedy show about it."

'How to Be a Better Human' will be performed live at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, one of the most renowned celebrations of arts and culture in Europe.

Combining comedy and loss in a bold blend, the show strives to ensure positivity is created from difficulty.

"I sat down and started writing and ultimately at first it was very much a tool for processing the grief," Chris explained. "I thought 'right, I need to get all of this grief and all of this pain out into a script, into something I can perform'.

"As people started hearing bits of it, people kept coming up to me and going 'I've got a story of grief that I need to tell' or 'actually, you helped me look at my own personal grief'.

"From that, I realised there was a real force behind it to make something really positive from something really terrible."

The show was first performed at Leeds Playhouse before Chris, who lives in Gledhow, reached out to the team behind Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

"They came back and said 'yeah, we'd absolutely love to programme you for the full month, are you interested?'," Chris said. "I bit their hand off to be honest because the venue Summerhall is the home of all the really personal, really true spoken word stuff, a lot of it anyway.

"It's a one-man spoken word comedy show about grief, loss and self-acceptance. Essentially, it's an autobiographical show."

As well as helping Chris process his own grief, he hopes the show can help others who have had similar experiences.

"If I can share my story, this personal story, and show this vulnerability on the stage, my hope as a performer is that people watch it and feel enabled to tell a little bit of their story," he said. "I hope it can make them feel like they can go and have a conversation with a person who they've been avoiding talking to about grief or about loss or about whatever it might be.

"If it's inevitable that we're going to lose people, if we talk about it now, maybe it can make it that little bit easier when it does happen."

Breaking down taboos about discussing grief and loss is one of the driving factors behind the show and Chris himself has sought out opportunities to openly discuss what he has been through and the impact it has had.

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"I'm always open to conversations about grief, because I think it's one of those things that that once you've experienced it, it causes so much empathy with other people who've also been through it," he said. "I think it's really important that we all connect to each other.

"I've been to a few death cafes where the main aim is just to talk about death in general. I we can talk about it now, then it hopefully helps us be equipped to talk about and manage the pain when it does happen."

Chris works as the artistic director of Brave Words, a Leeds-based theatre and spoken word company.

They work with a lot of schools within Leeds putting on performance poetry and theatre workshops, and also work to ensure theatres are as accessible to young people as they can be.

Next month, he will be taking his passion for expression through words and offering support up to Scotland, where he will be performing his show on 24 different dates throughout August in the Red Lecture Theatre at Edinburgh's Summerhall.

"I always kind of have this slight disclaimer that I'm not a qualified therapist," he said. "I'm a spoken word artist and a poet and I can't take your pain away, although I'm always happy to listen at the end of the show."

Chris may not be able to completely take the pain away, but his run of Scotland shows will certainly aim to at least get people talking about their struggles with grief, as well as to get people laughing.

Tickets are available here.