EDINBURGH 2023: Bonnie He Guest Blog

Bonnie He, creator and performer of A Terrible Show for Terrible people on a non-verbal comedy performance about female sexuality & desire with a connection that speaks to everyone in the audience.

I never intended to make a feminist show. I made a comedy show. But because I AM a feminist, I ended up making a feminist comedy show.

I’m Bonnie He, creator, solo performer and producer of A Terrible Show for Terrible People, a raunchy physical comedy show with only two words. I have proclaimed this show suitable for perverts, feminists and your mom, which, of course, are not at all mutually exclusive. This show has won awards including Best Comedy from the Hollywood Fringe Festival and Fringiest Show from the Orlando Fringe Winter Mini-Fest, and I’m rather delighted that it has resonated so strongly with audiences, with nary a word.

My philosophy is that boys are stupid - why should they have all the fun? ‘Boys will be boys’ has always given men permission to descend to inspired levels of base stupidity, whereas women learn from a young age that it’s shameful to be true to yourself. A chorus of “You throw/hit/sound like a girl” echoes in our formulative psyches.

Why can’t girls be allowed to be girls, free of the unattainably puritan standards we’ve been held to? My brand of feminism and equality is the unabashed celebration of women being dumb. Naughty. And horny. Mostly horny. So I created the show that I desperately wanted to see: a comedy about female desire.

Los Angeles has a rich improv comedy scene and the country’s top schools. I started my comedy journey with classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade and eventually made it onto a house team at Second City Hollywood, but to be honest, I always felt like a mediocre improviser. When a wave of clown workshops hit LA in the 2010s, I took my first one and instantly became hooked, finding the art of clowning so incredibly freeing in a way I was unable to initially articulate. And that’s why it was perfect. Improv was about demonstrating intellectual superiority and saying the wittiest things, while clowning was just being able to embrace the sheer stupidity of oneself without needing to say anything at all.

Thus, my sexy idiot was born. At the Orlando Fringe Winter Mini-Fest, the Orlando Weekly kindly opined, ‘I appreciated how He’s genital-centric humor manages to be puerile without being explicit…’ Why make a dick joke, when there’s a vag right here? Why masturbate when you can mistressbate? Toilet humour, but make it…uh, female. Girls can grow up to be anything they want, including moronic, perverse clowns. Hashtag feminism.

The situations presented in my show aren’t unique, actually. There’s nothing wrong with being the object of desire, but we rarely see women be a driver of their own. The desire expressed in this physical show is absurd and irreverent, but underneath the raucousness, it is surprisingly honest. An ingrained tenet of all comedic training is the idea of ‘truth in comedy,’ and by admitting our most shameful wants, we become deeply relatable. Of the show’s themes, Better Lemons stated, ‘So we may have entered in a patriarchal frame of mind, but we could not possibly leave that way.’

Female desire is very real, but often unheard. I loudly—and nonverbally—wanted to challenge that suppression, and A Terrible Show for Terrible People was born.

I only set out to make a comedy show, but I did it by putting female sexual expression on full display, so I accidentally, proudly, made a feminist comedy show. And I’m dedicating it to all the dumb, naughty, horny women out there.

A Terrible Show for Terrible People will be performed at Underbelly Cowgate (Iron Belly) at 11.10pm from 3rd – 27th August (Not 14th or 21st) with BSL interpreted shows on 9th, 16th & 23rd.

Booking Link: https://underbellyedinburgh.co.uk/event/a-terrible-show-for-terrible-people

Photo credit: Nicol Biesek

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