Q&A: EDINBURGH 2024: Jay Light on WRONG! A F*CKED UP GAME SHOW

BWW caught up with Jay Light about bringing Wrong! A F*cked Up Game Show  to the 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

How did you first get involved in the world of comedy?

I began doing stand-up by volunteering to be a friend’s “comedy buddy” as suggested by Judy Carter's The Comedy Bible. We began writing jokes our senior year of high school in little Moleskine notebooks, then started doing open mics our freshman year of college. After I graduated, I moved to Los Angeles, thinking I was going to use my film school degree and work in “the industry,” but wound up working as a doorman at The Comedy Store and getting involved with the original Roast Battle, which was the match that lit the fuse for the rest of my comedy career.

What inspired you to create Wrong! A F*cked Up Game Show?

After coming to Fringe in 2019 and being blown away by the level of creativity at comedy shows here, I wanted to expand my repertoire as a writer and performer and began taking clown classes. In one of those classes, while trying to come up with a bit to do, I wrote down the phrase “fucked up game show host” without really knowing what it meant. I have always loved game shows - besides Comedy Central and Adult Swim, the channel I probably watched the most growing up was the Game Show Network, and I even hosted my college TV station’s game show “Win Stuff!” for three years. I never did anything with that bit in class, but a couple of months later, a theatre in LA asked me if I would like to put up a roast show. I didn’t, but I was down to try something else, and decided to give WRONG! a whirl with little more than the idea of “game show where we make the contestants uncomfortable.”

What was the creative process like for Wrong! A F*cked Up Game Show?

The show has existed for about two and a half years, running monthly in Los Angeles and with some occasional road shows as well. We have kept certain elements of the show the same since the beginning – a set of dark/dirty material from the comics up top, panel games in the middle and a clean, wholesome joke from each comic to close us out – but the middle games have fluctuated from show to show. We basically spent the first year in total obscurity, which allowed us to develop a deep bench of games to play, like our signature game Entweetment, which makes comics guess what they actually said on old social media posts that we’ve redacted words from. Now, me, my co-host and our two co-producers have dialled in on the best way to divide and conquer for prepping each show. There’s a lot of scouring the internet doing research on our contestants, a lot of tech setup, a little bit of arguing to make sure we’re not going over the line anywhere and a dash of finding good prizes in the thrift stores and trash of wherever we’re performing.

How do you combine a game show and a comedy show to make it fun for not only the players but audience members as well?

For me, the most important way to do this is by making sure we’re playing up the tension we’re building within the comics. Every comedy show thrives on tension, but usually, the comic is creating the tension themselves. What makes WRONG! special is that we’re creating an additional layer of tension for the comics themselves and watching them be forced to break the tension creates big laughs that are infectious with the audience. Throw in some audience games and prizes to sprinkle in along the way, and we’re golden!

What is it about dark humour that you think is so appealing to audiences?

I think being able to pull off dark jokes or cover edgy subject matter in comedy is like being a tightrope walker, and audiences love that element of danger and surprise. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. I came up doing Roast Battle in Los Angeles, so I have seen a lot of dark jokes over the years. A lot of them were more shocking than funny and the audience responded in kind. I think audiences are smart enough to recognise that pulling off good dark comedy requires a skilled writer and performer, so the stakes are higher for everyone involved. But those big belly laughs, the ones that feel like someone has punched you a little bit, you can’t deny the joy of being brought to a place like that as an audience member.

What is it like bringing Wrong! A F*cked Up Game Show to the Fringe from the United States?

It’s been a remarkable run! The abundance of comics available to have as panellists combined with late-night audiences that are down to take a chance on our crazy little format has made this Fringe feel very special in the history of our show. We were lucky enough to have multiple sold-out nights throughout the run as well, which is always a good feeling no matter where you’re performing. We’re hoping to return for a full run next year, so stay tuned!

What do you hope audiences take away from Wrong! A F*cked Up Game Show?

 

I hope audiences recognise that you can do edgy comedy without being edgelords, that there is nuance to everyone and everything and that being able to laugh in the face of the darkness is a very important thing to cultivate.

How would you describe Wrong! A F*cked Up Game Show in one word?

WRONG!

Wrong! A F*cked Up Game Show ran from 1 to 11 August at Just the Tonic at the Caves - Just the Fancy Room at the 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Photo Credit: Van Corona

Sponsored content

To post a comment, you must register and login.