Jamie Loftus: The Edinburgh Interviews 2019
Who? Jamie Loftus
What? Boss, Whom is Girl
Where? Pleasance Courtyard – Baby Grand(Venue 33)
When? 22:45
What are your feelings as you enter into this year’s Edinburgh Fringe season?
Fear and inferiority and excitement. That’s very negative, probably, and I will work on that.
What is the premise of your Edinburgh show this year?
My show, Boss, Whom is Girl, is about corporate feminist CEO named Shell Gasoline-Sandwich who is using in-home Alexa-like devices to spy on her customers. Like a lot of people in her position, she’s constantly appealing to her audience’s sincere views to sell them something that is absolutely trying to kill them, or at least sell video footage of them naked to Halliburton and Gatorade. It’s also a comedy.
What is the biggest obstacle you face(d) while putting this show together?
Research! This was the first show I’ve done that required a lot of external knowledge — for Boss, Whom Is Girl, it was a lot of reading and some interviews about surveillance technology, how it’s weaponized and watching how successful female CEOs have leveraged pretty reductive identity politics to service their business versus people. I have worked in research and journalism almost as much as I have in comedy, so finding a reason to combine the two was a lot of fun for me and I think ended up serving the show’s specificity. I’ve never had a show with a bibliography before, and if that sounds boring it’s because it is but please come see it anyways.
Another thing I went back and forth with is whether finding empathy for this cartoon villain of a character was worthwhile, and ended up deciding it was. There is a quality I find very interesting in corporate feminists to be either doubly evil or more sympathetic and it changes all the time.
Has your attitude towards the Fringe changed at all in recent years?
This is my first time going, I am a dumb baby and don’t know anything.
Do you have any other Edinburgh show recommendations?
I’m really excited for The Living Room with Amritha Dhaliwal and Gemma Soldati, it’s one of my favorite shows I’ve ever seen anyone who doesn’t go is a fool. I’m also psyched to see Courtney Pauroso’s Gutterplum, Mary Houlihan’s Me & Jack, Catherine Cohen’s The Twist? She’s Gorgeous!, Langston Kerman’s The Loose Canon and Anna Drezen’s Okay Get Home Safe!
Where would you like to be in a year’s time?
I truly could care less which means I should be back on Wellbutrin.
GET YOUR TICKETS FOR JAMIE LOFTUS: ‘BOSS, WHOM IS GIRL’ HERE