Kate-Lois Elliott is about to do a UK tour of her debut show, How To Belong Without Joining a Cult, which sold out to critical acclaim at Edinburgh last year (and will be on at Komedia in May 2025!). We asked her about the inspiration behind the show and the importance of comedic storytelling in our lives.
Based On a True Story
The show is based on the true story of my mum escaping a cult when she was 16 and the impact it’s had on my family and from that, the way I live my life and see the world. Also, the audience gets to invent their own cult… serious answers only, please.
In How To Belong Without Joining a Cult, I talk about the seeds of culty behaviour in real life, everything from the way girls treat each other at school to wellness gurus to political and religious ideology. It’s been described as a show with substance; in fact, a professor from the US stopped me after one of my shows in Edinburgh to tell me that it could be a TedTalk. I didn’t want to tell him that in parts of the internet, women’s comedy being described as a TedTalk is a bit troll-like, because I knew what he meant, and it made my day. I did the comedy, told him a story, and we went on a little journey together. That’s what I was aiming for. It’s a far cry from the comedy club sets I was brought up on, and I like it that way.
Representation Matters
When I was little, the only female stand-up comedian I remember from TV was Jo Brand. As I got a bit older, I gravitated towards Victoria Wood, Dawn French, and Eddie Izzard, whose video cassettes I watched on repeat as a teenager. But as much as I loved these acts, I couldn’t necessarily see myself in them. I went to train at drama school in my twenties. The course I did was about experimental theatre. We explored (sometimes against our will) the plethora of unconventional performance styles available to us. I saw theatre, performance art, ballet, Clowncore, and experimental European multidisciplinary art.
At one point, I even watched a man (who had to take us off school grounds to do it) draw blood from his chest to demonstrate some sort of conceptual (or very literal) version of his heart spilling out love. That one was… interesting.
However, throughout my training – where we were told to keep an open mind – there was not one mention of stand-up comedy. Not one. It just wasn’t considered to be theatre. Yet theatre is what it is: a person stands on stage, tells a story, and we react.
Years later, I saw a clip of Aisling Bea on Live At The Apollo, and everything changed. I discovered Katherine Ryan, Sara Pascoe, London Hughes, Ali Wong, and Iliza Shlesinger – women who’d been paving the way the entire time, but I hadn’t known they were there. They were funny women who didn’t have to rely on a quirk to pass under the patriarchal commercial radar, and they were saying something important. This, by the way, is yet another example of why representation does matter. Without it, How To Belong Without Joining a Cult might not exist!
If I’m honest (and this is a trumpet well played), Fleabag was the moment that really did it for me. It highlighted the idea that you could use a one-woman show to tell an important, relatable story in a humorous way. Before that, the term ‘one-woman show’ was met with eye rolls and a reference to that Friends episode with a woman in a blackbox Manhattan theatre screaming, ‘WHY DON’T YOU LIKE ME?’.
Fringe Theatre
At Edinburgh Fringe that year, I bought a ticket to a show called Jenny Bede: The Musical. It had some fun concepts in it, hilarious songs and stories, and I left thinking, “What a great theatre-show-thing”. Separated from the comedy world as I was, I didn’t even realise that Jenny Bede was a comedian.
Then there was my friend’s stand-up show, and the story of how he’d experienced homelessness as a teenager. It was moving and heartfelt but also scathing to the society that had allowed such a thing to happen. And what about Charlie Russel Aims to Please, where the audience had to participate all the way through? With stickers and voting, they ultimately determined the course of the entire show.
Suddenly, the concept of what stand-up could be was blown wide open. These shows weren’t filling stadiums or pleasing the masses; they were taking risks in performance spaces above pubs and in university classrooms, black boxes and the occasional caravan. Some of the shows weren’t quite finished yet and others had one audience member (as is a right of passage for any Fringe performance), but they were all part of the big experiment of comedy.
Belonging Through Storytelling
I love a good story. Stories are important because they help us learn and evolve. Theatre was invented to bring stories to the masses; to challenge people to think about morality and all that jazz. So, yes, I think stand-up comedy is theatre.
And within the diverse world of comedy, there are so many little – dare I say it – cults… We don’t need to all watch the same Saturday night game show anymore, there’s something out there for everyone.
So I hope you come to see my show. I hope you get something out of it. I hope you realise that cults are everywhere: last year’s Hen Do WhatsApp Chat, ‘Live podcast recording’ rallies, IKEA Croydon (What’s that? You only came in for a photo frame? That’s cool. Just follow the arrows…).
When you’re in the show, I hope you tell me what your dream cult is, and we use it to create our very own ultimate mega cult. But if not, there’s a different show out there that’s better for you. And that’s cool, too.
Kate-Lois Elliott’s How To Belong Without Joining A Cult is directed by Esther Manito. See the show at Komedia on Sat 3 May 2025 at 5.30pm as part of the Brighton Fringe.
Want to read more from Kate-Lois Elliott? Check out her excellent article ‘Stand-up is an art form, so deserved to be funded’ as published by Chortle.
Follow Kate-Lois on Instagram: @kateloiselliott
