Jess Fostekew: ‘I do love baring my soul a bit, don’t I?’

Jess Fostekew is having a lovely time. Hot on the heels of her hugely successful 2022 Edinburgh Fringe run of Wench – her follow-up to the triumphant Hench in 2019 – she is touring the UK to a “fun, joyful, bright, kind audience” in whose company she clearly thrives.

Multiple projects between acting (Motherland; Avoidance), writing (The Guardian), broadcasting (BBC Radio 4) and podcasting (Hoovering; The Guilty Feminist) have played a role in helping her to reach new people with her comedy.

She is strict about never reading her standup reviews, but she needn’t worry. “It’s more that I’m much better at taking external criticism of my writing or acting,” she reflects.

Certainly, her comedy is characterised for its raw and confessional honesty. From the feminist hymn of Hench, about her experiences of weight lifting, Wench is underpinned by the story of Fostekew leaving a hetrosexual relationship with the father of her child, and exploring and celebrating her queer identity in her late thirties.

Ahead of her show at Bristol Old Vic on November 6, she told Bristol24/7 more about the thrill of finding, and telling, her truth.

Jess Fostekew – photo: Matt Stronge

Hench, and the follow-up, Wench, are both intensely personal shows in very different ways. How do your shows generally evolve?

“Initially I just write all the time about what ever is rattling around my thoughts and feelings. I hone in increasingly on anything that causes me any sort of internal conflict as I think that’s often where comedy is born for me.

“So I start by keeping it really broad and fluid and then in the last months before a show has to be ‘finished’ I start getting really fussy and technical – or I did with Wench anyway, because there’s so much in it that actually, my opinions and feelings on which are really complicated.”

What do you find exhilarating about confessional, as opposed to purely observational comedy? As a performer, is the adrenaline amplified by the liberation of being truly yourself on stage?

“I don’t know if the adrenaline is amplified so much as unless there has been at least a seed of truth in my stories, then I don’t really know how to sell them.

“The more the material evolves, the less close to what exactly happened they get – in the same way that our memories work anyway. I find it just suits me best to be confessional and I’ve grown used to the vulnerability that entails.”

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Are you the standup you always envisioned you would be, or are you always surprising yourself by how far you’re willing to push yourself into new territory?

“Ooo good question. I don’t think I envisioned myself being any particularly type of stand up – I just move with where my brains take me really.

“I did always hope I’d be able to make comedy out of things I really care about and I’m getting there now. But equally, I never don’t want to also be making comedy about less pressing issues (e.g. pubes).”

What do your audiences generally want to reach out and talk to you about after seeing your standup?

“It depends on the themes in my shows. With Wench, I’m finding I’m having some incredible conversations with people around queerness, especially around meeting queerness as an adult and/ or as a parent. It’s lovely.

“I had one person come out to me who hadn’t come out to anyone else yet – because I was harmless, a stranger. I don’t even know her name and I’ll never see her again. And I remember doing that at first too – talking to complete randoms, just practising saying the words. I felt incredibly honoured to be one of her practice people – and to make her feel as welcome as all the queer people in my life made me.”

Jess Fostekew: Wench is at Bristol Old Vic on November 6 at 8pm. Tickets are available at www.bristololdvic.org.uk. 

Main photo: Matt Stronge

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