We sat down with comedian Erin Farrington who is teaching people how to manifest their best life in her new stand-up-show-come-seminar Think Better: Manifesting Money, Real Estate and Hot People at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this August.
Can you tell us a little bit about your show?
It is a Manifestation Seminar, using personal experience and just kind of perfect vibes. I am helping the people of Fringe make their deepest desires a reality.
Your Edinburgh Fringe show Think Better: Manifesting Money, Real Estate and Hot People is all about manifesting a better life. What was the turning point that made you decide it was time to share your life lessons with other people?
An Instagram psychic reached out via comment (and later though paid DM) to tell me that I was perfect – her words – and that I should share my gift with the world. She also said my first child would be a boy and or that I would lead a solitary life in a kind of a cave situation. Tarot is often an either-or situation, as it turns out. Anyway, best $4,000 I ever spent.
You’ve performed all around the world – what makes the Edinburgh Fringe unique to you?
To be real for a moment, the energy of the festival is absolutely intoxicating. So many shows happening every second of the day, the spectrum of creativity is so much wider than I could have ever imagined, every square foot full of new and inspiring art. It is silly and fun and moving all at the same time, it is a unique spirit that I have yet to see be recreated anywhere else.
You play the lovable but stressed-out stage manager Erin in Stamptown Comedy Night – how similar are you to her in real life, and how do you manage to keep cool when things go wrong on stage?
Okay, so you think I’m lovable?! What the hell, yes I’ll go out with you. Stop begging.
I would say that I am very much like my character but instead of being nervous about performance-related incidents I have more email-based anxiety. I got my start as a professional improviser out of Boston MA, so if something unexpected or goes wrong on stage I am not usually phased. In fact, I kind of love the chaos of live performance.
I try to keep spots for improvisation in all of my work, I like when a show feels more like a relationship with the audience full of moments that we are all experiencing for the first and last time together. I feel most calm onstage when I feel like we are figuring out the show together in real-time. Playing pretend has been my career for most of my adult life so I relate most to my Stamptown character when someone hands me a form. Tax season really does me in.
Do you have any writing advice for aspiring young comedians?
Take classes! Go to an improv theatre or do a clown workshop and try everything out. Do stuff that makes you scared or feel embarrassed and keep doing it until you lose the fear entirely. Class is always the best place to work out your worst jokes because everyone there is likely just as much of a nerd-ass freak as you are so it softens the blow when you bomb. Go to lots of shows and find performers who inspire you, ask them questions when you can and if the opportunity arises buy them drinks, too.
Erin Farrington – Think Better: Manifesting Money, Real Estate and Hot People will be performed at 5.40pm in the Pleasance Courtyard (Bunker Two) from the 31st July – 25th August (not 14th)