> Elf Lyons on horror as a solution & bringing new show, Horses, to Edinburgh Fringe 2024 - SNACK: Music, film, arts and culture magazine for Scotland

Elf Lyons on horror as a solution & bringing new show, Horses, to Edinburgh Fringe 2024

Stand-up comedian, director, and classically trained clown – Elf Lyons has a list of comedy awards and accolades longer than this article. Her show Horses claims to be the first ever comedy gig performed entirely by a horse. 

Does Britain have a unique relationship with horses?

Horses have done everything: pit ponies in the mines, postal carriages, artillery, cavalry, food, agriculture. Horses have been integral in getting us from one place to the other. But I didn’t quite realise that when I started the show. It was purely to be silly, to make a show about horses, because my sister loved horses when I was growing up and I’m allergic, so it seemed like a silly idea. The show ended up morphing into something. You start with one idea of the show, and then it goes into something totally different.

The show is just all about play, really. It’s a great show to bring anyone that you used to play with to, or if you’re a parent and you have kids who are grown up – if you feel like you’ve not played in a long time or that you don’t know how to. It’s probably going to be the last show I do for a very long time so it’d be great to have people there and get ready to meet a horse.

Horses was written by you, but it’s being performed by a horse called Treacle. How did you meet?

Treacle is a very aggressive horse from a Filly Fat Farm, where she lives with lots of other horses, and she wants to be the first ever horse to win the Edinburgh Comedy award. She doesn’t think horses are appreciated enough, because we’ve replaced horses with bikes. And she read about War Horse and was absolutely livid that horses had been replaced with puppets. So we got together, and then we interviewed her friends, and then we made scenes inspired by their lives. It’s quite shocking. She would describe it as Titus Andronicus meets Black Beauty.

We don’t shy away from showing the brutality of being a horse. We performed it in Switzerland, and a woman came up to us afterwards and said, ‘are you going to have a trigger warning?’. Which is pretty funny, considering the show is entirely mimed. So, yeah, people can come and get shocked if they wish, but Treacle’s not going to hold back.

I saw you talk about horror and comedy as being sibling art forms and wondered if you wanted to expand on that a wee bit.

Well, I think what I like about horror and comedy is that they’re both aiming for a physiological reaction from an audience. Like, one wants to create an audience to audibly laugh and the other wants them to either gasp or scream or move or, like, be sick. You know, your whole job as a comedian is the orchestration of the audience. How do you want them to feel? What sounds do you want to create? Because there’s always that really simple idea, if you just want to make them laugh. But there’s loads of types of laughter and people laugh for very specific reasons, and also laughing’s really personal – depending on someone’s background and how they were brought up, how they were treated will really affect how they feel safe to laugh. When I’m making work, I like coming from the audience first and then working backwards.

When people talk about relatable comedy they always imagine straight stand-up. And what I’ve noticed is that, actually, the most relatable comedy is the clown. Is the weird, is the alternative, because it unites all audiences in a very different way, regardless of class, background, language barrier, lived experience, nationality, So it’s for everyone, even though it’s pretty horrifying.

I’m a big scaredy cat. I don’t do horror films, and I can intellectualise that all I want, but it’s mainly because I get scared.  Why is being frightened an important thing in art?

 I think horror is really important because it gives us a way to problem-solve. It’s like why play is important, or any sort of make believe. You put yourself in these scenarios, you choose the conflicts, and you choose how to overcome them. And that’s the really comforting thing about play and make believe and why kids often make the most awful stories, because they always combat it. I think the joy of a lot of horror is you watch the protagonist go into the dark room and you go, well, I wouldn’t have done that. Why are they doing this? There’s a way of working yourself through a scenario that in reality would be awful.

There’s an idea that when people discuss trauma, they move it into their prefrontal cortex and intellectualise it and process it.

Yeah, well, what I like to do is put it on stage and go, hey, let’s explore this and see how we can make something beautiful out of it.

You’re a bit of a festival veteran at this point. What are your survival tips?

Join a spa. People might say that’s bougie, but you’re there to work. I’m not there to go out and get drunk every night. I’m there to do very physical shows. So I need to treat my body like an athlete, which is what my dad always taught me. So I buy a really good horror book. I find a cafe that no one’s going to, but that does decent coffee. Join a spa, try and go to the Meadows every day. Find a tarot reader, try not to get thrush. That’s it, basically.

Elf Lyons: Horses is at Pleasance Courtyard Above from 31st July to 26th August at 21:20

Sam Blythe: Method in My Madness (A One-Man Hamlet) directed by Elf Lyons is at Assembly Roxy in the Snug Bar, 1st to 25th August at 12:55

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