My amazing friend, Jordan, sent me this brilliant message in response to my last entry about whether I should write a show with a theme, or attempt an hour of themeless comedy:

Hi Bec,
I enjoyed your recent post so I thought I’d share some of the ideas it triggered off for me.

I think you are right when you talk about needing boundaries to structure your work - when you can do ANYTHING, how do you choose what to do? - but I think you might be artificially constraining yourself in the way you think about themes. “Themed show or unthemed show” seems to me to be a false dichotomy - pretty much no one can write a substantial piece of work (be it standup, a novel, a tv script or a collection of poems), or a body of work, without themes coming through. “Themes” are the just the names we give the ideas we are thinking about and consider important to discuss through our work. They are not always predetermined or intentional, as in “I am going to write a book about racism/the role of globalisation/the impact of bilingual parenting”; often they emerge from the process of creation.

Perhaps an illustration will help. I got through Yr 12 English without really understanding what my teachers were on about when they talked about “theme” in an authors’ collected works. Then the following year I read almost everything that Robert Heinlein wrote (I’m not recommending him specifically, this is just where I had my personal epiphany) and I realised that among other things his stories covered, he was ALWAYS banging on about how it would be better if all the sexual hangups the Western world currently had would just evaporate and we could all have happy, no-consequences sex with whoever we wanted (he was writing in the 1960s). That was my big lightbulb moment, of “ahhhh! that’s what they mean when they talk about ‘theme’ - it’s just the ideas that the author is really concerned about and wants to explore and/or promote!” In your work, it seems to me, both the Superheroes and the Stupid Game show dealt with the issue of why the real world isn’t more amazing, like it is/was in stories/childhood. A meta-theme of your work.

So, in some ways I see this question of “Should I do a themeless show?” as a distraction, or a meaningless question. Unless you want to do the world’s most boring and content-free comedy show, it’s going to have to have a theme in it. However, it doesn’t necessarily have to be the case that you decide on the theme from the start and use it to structure the show. Like you said, with [Bec Hill Didn’t Want to Play Your Stupid Game Anyway], you didn’t realise the show was about growing up until halfway through writing it. It may be that this new show will evolve in a similar way without the rigorous constraints of an externally imposed theme from the outset. 

So here’s my suggestion for moving forward (albeit from someone who has never done nor written standup, but knows a bit about the creative process). You’re a smart person with a particular range of interests and you’re developing a fantastic comedic presence. Reflect on the ideas you think are important. Allow yourself the freedom to find humour wherever it lurks in your life, regardless of theme. Whatever you come up with, there will be a consistent thread of “Bec-ness” running through it. Once you have a few “bits” start shifting and rearranging them like mosaic tiles until you start to see a pattern. Then follow the pattern. 

I hope this little piece of my mind has been helpful or thought-provoking and hasn’t come across as patronising. Speaking as an audience member, I prefer comedy shows that have some kind of coherent theme, thread, or story to follow. Hannah Gadsby is someone who does this well, I think - in The Clive Young Shuffle and Mrs Chuckles, she took a single framing concept and hung the show on this skeleton - when she looped away with an idea, it always came back somehow to the central theme. But I never got the impression she sat down to write a show “about” walking, or “about” the relationship between interpersonal expressiveness and life satisfaction. These were just some of the issues that came up when she decided to tell a story about walking across England, or reflected on her personal style. 

Good luck writing your new show, I look forward to hearing about what you come up with (and seeing it in Adelaide, eventually!)

I think she raises some good points. What are your thoughts?