Q&A: EDINBURGH 2024: Mo Fry Pasic on WORSE THAN YOU

BWW caught up with Mo Fry Pasic about bringing Worse Than You to the 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

How did you first get involved in the worlds of comedy and theatre?

Can I tell you? I am paralysed by this question. I’m like . . . Okay well, we can start in childhood. Then we can talk about how maybe no one can be funny if they haven’t experienced trauma in some capacity. Then we can talk about how I used to think every comedian secretly wanted to act but didn’t because we were all uncomfortable having “feelings” or “needs” in earnest. Shall we talk about high school? There are just so many ways to answer this. A million things got me in, a little less than a million got me out, and just the right things kept me here. Short answer: I can cry on command and have always had an undeniable star quality. *swills Martini*

Can you tell us about your show, Worse Than You?

Worse Than You is a very funny play about the type of person serious trauma creates and it is genuinely hard to explain without flattening. Which is kind of like trauma! You can label traumatic experiences in flat facts i.e. your parent died, you were roofied or *lists all types of traumas,* but the realities of these experiences are abstract. They live in the small private moments of our lives. Like how you always wear your hair in a pony because it was down the night your dad died. Or how no one understands why you can never watch that one Miley Cyrus movie, but it’s because it was the only thing in theatres the two weeks you spent hiding away from the world after you were roofied. Or god, the things you’re up late googling to see if you’re broken - “burning sensation in chest not heartburn I don’t think: am I dying??”

I’ve ACTUALLY googled “is cellulite a result of sexual assault” before. Not ‘cause I was sad or anything, but because that shit is sooo hard to get rid of and I am leaving no treatment stone unturned. I will EMDR my way into a smooth ass if I have to!!!!

Worse Than You is a show about a very funny neurotic woman in pain. And hopefully, we succeed in helping our audiences realise that the worst parts of all of us are everywhere - imagine I end the answer there - which can either haunt us, fry our nervous system and eventually kill us, or it can be our entry into miracles and healing connection to the stranger sitting next to us.

What was the creative process like for Worse Than You?

All-encompassing. When I’m working on something I genuinely consider everything to be a part of the process. Falling in love, doing a cleanse, going dancing, breaking up, driving 10 hours to Sedona with my best friend and director to heal with horses and then she doesn’t want to lay down next to therapy horses so she’s like, “I don’t like the horse lady’s energy over text. Let’s cancel and do a wine tour” and it’s like, her energy was fine just say you want to do the wine tour, Sudi. It’s all the process. Which would be good for tax write-offs, if I knew how to do taxes. (Hope this joke translates. The only thing I know about taxes over here is The Land Tax Act of like, I think the 1800s??? And that could be not Scotland. Sorry.)

How does it feel to be performing a show based on your own experiences?

Easy to memorise! That’s truly the best part about writing your own stuff. It takes two seconds to be off-book because I wrote it. Emotionally? Depends on the day. Sometimes the story felt overly revealing and I was scared I was “too much.” Some days I felt like we weren't showing enough of my life. Those were harder days. We'd be working on a scene trying to discover how the character would act under the circumstances and my ego would pop in and be like, “You think that’s bad?? That’s just a SLICE of what was going on at the time!” And then I’d find myself wanting to just list shitty life stuff that was completely irrelevant to the scene so the world wouldn't judge my character for having a big reaction to what I deemed “not enough trauma” to “have feelings about” :) Cool, right??

I think that’s a pretty normal feeling. Both a judgement of myself and an inability to step outside myself to see what parts worked for the story and what parts didn’t need to be shared. That’s why having a director who is not only good but that you can trust with vulnerable material is life-saving. Sudi knows me and Sudi is really f**king good at what she does. She was good at guiding the boat whenever we hit those choppy waters. 

How do you balance the comedy and darker themes in a “traumedic” play like Worse Than You?

Respect your audience. When dealing with sad shit - it’s sad. I don’t need to convince you of that, so let’s spend as little time there as possible and let’s laugh laugh laugh. If you just cried? You deserve a laugh. You need a time to big sniffle when no one will notice. It’s not hard to balance when you really make it real. We’re all always dancing between a laugh and a cry, baby! 

What is it like bringing Worse Than You to the Edinburgh Fringe from the States?

Heavy. I carried soooo many suitcases with so much tech and three laptops. I want to start wearing gaffer tape on my belt so more tech and crew people respect me. Maybe I’ll start walking around with a boom. Shoot, wait. Doesn’t gaffer mean “big boss” or something over here? Sudi - we need to edit that out. (Sorry, we say gaffer tape in the piece and I am ALL ABOUT cultural translation edits - Sainsbury’s Local vibes!) 

What do you hope audiences take away from Worse Than You?

Have you ever listened to David Foster Wallace’s 2005 Kenyon Commencement Speech? It’s called “This is Water” and I recommend it. I'm very much millennial-ising myself with this reference, but so it goes. The whole gist is that we are all living in the muck of life right now, together, and our consideration for each other can be life-changing. In Worse Than You, a single compliment changes the course of Jolie’s life. A single moment of presence with a stranger. I hope people know they can make such an impact after seeing my show. That it is not Pollyanna, but actually very heavy metal to know a single smile or “nice shoes” can change someone's life. And with a guiding caveat better put by Foster Wallace:

Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider. If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. 

How would you describe Worse Than You in one word?

Help.

Worse Than You runs from 31 July to 25 August (no performance on 12 August) at C ARTS - C Aurora at the 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Photo Credit: Bahareh Ritter

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