Getting to Know Pippa Evans

Pippa Evans is in a pre-Edinburgh panic. “I recognise the stages. It goes: ‘I’ve had a brilliant idea!’, ‘Maybe it isn’t...’, ‘Oh no, what have I done?’, and then ‘Oh well, I’m here now!’”

Her previous Fringe forays, however, suggest that her time up north will be worth the trip. Her debut in 2008 came with a nomination for the If.comedy award (now the Foster’s Edinburgh Comedy Award) for Best Newcomer, for which Pippa was, so to speak, pipped to the post by Sarah Millican.

“The glare of that was quite intimidating and I don’t think I was ready for it, even though it was lovely to be nominated,” she says. “It made me realise that I wasn’t ready as a comedian and as a writer to do the things that people were offering me to do. Now I’m in a much better position to do that, but have no desire for the glare!”

Since the nomination, Evans has propelled her most club-friendly character, troubled American singer Loretta Maine, as her stand-out persona. Loretta is a creation you could imagine as a drinking partner of Courtney Love back in the day and, for Evans, she is infectious and familiar enough that she talks of her almost as a real person.

Loretta will be back this year for her third show/album, and will be attempting to go all pop on us. Meanwhile, Evans resumes service with long-form improv troupe Showstoppers and brings an under-the-radar solo hour Don't Worry, I Don't Know Who I Am Either.

The show is the moment when Evans comes out from behind her masks, albeit with some ‘visitors’ passing through. It's partly a by-product of the Sunday Assembly, the life-affirming humanist ‘church’ that was set up by her and fellow comedian Sanderson Jones, a venture that will soon have 100 outposts worldwide.

“Since doing the Sunday Assembly I have been invited to talk as myself a lot more. Even though that’s how I started comedy, I was always more confident about being someone else. So the show is about finding your own voice and the impossible task of defining yourself.”

Just being a comedian, says Evans, doesn't give her enough definition. And the Sunday Assembly? Well, the glare has also exposed the need for her to think outside of a gag.

“I started being asked what I believed in over a range of issues and I have spent a year thinking about things, really. There were things for which I didn’t have an opinion or a punchline—failing on both counts!—so, at the very least, I wanted to be sure of why I was unsure.”

At the heart of Evans' work there’s an ongoing struggle between certainty and the unknown that sometimes cannot be bridged. Loretta Maine’s rock 'n' roll lifestyle is particularly precarious, and while Evans finds definition in identifiable viewpoints she acknowledges that identity itself is hard to pin down – including in that most specific of beasts, the Fringe brochure.

“You have to be so specific about show descriptions now so that you are ticking boxes. At the moment it is labelled, ‘comedy, musical, cabaret’ – but I’d quite like Don't Worry, I Don't Know Who I am Either to just be called ‘a show'!”