INTERVIEW: A Digital Pint with Nadia P. Manzoor, on Abusive Relationships, Disintegrating Family, Reckoning and Hip-Hop Dancing

Content Warning: Discussion of Abusive Relationships

Writer-performer Nadia P. Manzoor arrives at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe next week with her solo show Jerk Off! Described as an exploration of blame, grief, lust, family and memory collide in increasingly unexpected ways, the show features Ramadan, Jessica Alba, a five-foot-long female python and the four elements of hip hop. We caught up with Nadia for a pixelated pint to find out more about bringing her story to the stage.

You can catch Jerk Off! at Underbelly Bristo Square (Dairy Room) from 11:35 (80mins) on August 5 – 17, 19 – 24, 26 – 30. Tickets are Available Through the Underbelly Box Office.

Shay: Hi Nadia, tell us about your story and why you have decided to bring this to the stage now?

Nadia: Hi Shay! Jerk Off! is about the time my mother died when I was in my twenties, and about me not being able to face the grief of my family disintegrating. It’s about meeting a hip hop dancer from the Bronx who taught me how to battle, how to connect to my body, and how to unleash my sexuality and my anger in a way I’d never had access to before. It’s about grief. It’s about inheritance. And it’s about how I’m reckoning, as a 44-year-old woman with two children, with the violence I have not been willing to look at within myself. It’s the second in an autobiographical trilogy — Burq Off! was the escape, the running away; Jerk Off! is the return. Why now? Because I’m finally old enough to be honest about it, and young enough to still be a little feral about it.

Shay: Tell us about your process for putting together this hour — what do you do to get yourself motivated and what challenges have you found with this material?

Nadia: It’s been a long process. I had a reading in February that ran nearly two hours, and for the past six weeks I’ve been working with my director, Suba Das — who is incredible — completely recontextualizing the script and reframing it to make it work for 80 minutes at Edinburgh. To get motivated, I honestly just connect: to the story, to the text, to myself, and to my collaborators. I’m very disciplined — I tend to overwork, if anything. And this is a big deal for me, because I’m getting back on stage after seven years away, when I was prioritizing my children. So it’s a comeback, and that’s my biggest motivation — that, and wanting to show mothers, particularly mothers of young children, that we can keep making our art.

The biggest challenge with the material is that it’s about me — about my past, about abusive relationships, about finding my own part in dysfunctional dynamics — and owning that on stage in a way I never have before. To do that, I’ve had to sit with the stories I’ve been telling up till now, look at how they served a narrative of being stuck in a victim position, and figure out how I’m stepping out of that. That takes a lot of interrogation, and that’s the work I’ve been doing.

Shay: Tell us about your comedy icons — who are they, and how have they influenced your work?

Nadia: My first comedy icon, honestly, was my dad. He used to carry a little piece of paper in his pocket — that was his set list — and at parties and functions he’d pull it out, surrounded by a group of aunties and uncles, and start telling jokes. Dinner parties were his open mics. He’s a charismatic, funny storyteller with a wonderful sense of rhythm and timing, and he knows exactly how to hold an audience in the palm of his hand. His first love was actually the stage, but he wasn’t allowed to pursue it — his own father asked how he’d take care of his family if he did. So I grew up simply understanding that this was something we did.

Then came Goodness Gracious Me, the first comedy show about brown kids in the UK — my brother and I used to do impressions of it at the dining table to make my mum laugh. As I got deeper into comedy, I fell for the women: Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson on Broad City, and Fleabag. But the person who really sparked my love of solo storytelling was John Leguizamo. I saw Freak around 2012 and studied the hell out of it while making my first show, Burq Off! — the way he moves in and out of character so seamlessly, as narrator, code-switching, talking about the everyday immigrant experience. I felt so connected to it. Mike Birbiglia is another big one. So many solo storytellers have shaped me along the way.

Shay: Do you have any pre-show rituals?

Nadia: I absolutely do. I get really grounded in my body — I imagine the lava at the core of the earth and draw it up like straws through the soles of my feet, letting it move through my whole being. I connect to my spiritual ancestors, to the energy above me and below me, and I make sure I feel integrated. I say thank you to my body, and thank you to those who came before me. I get into a real place of reverence and presence, and it’s from there that I perform every show. It’s pretty beautiful.

Shay: Has/will the show be performed anywhere ahead of EdFringe?

Nadia: Yes — I’m doing a preview in Brooklyn, the very first one, on Saturday, July 18th at Brooklyn Art Haus in Williamsburg. I’m really excited to test it in front of my own city — I live in Brooklyn, so it feels special to share it there first.

Shay: With EdFringe now just around the corner, what are you most excited for?

Nadia: I’ve never done a full run like this before, so I’m genuinely excited to perform the material this many times in a month and get right inside it. I imagine that by doing that many shows, you just end up living in it — you stop thinking about your lines and you find that rhythm of play where you can say, “Oh, I know this show inside out, now I can just have fun with it.” I love the material I’ve been working on, and I love performing it. The work right now in rehearsal is getting everything distinct and clear and embodied — but I can’t wait to take all of that to Edinburgh and just play. It is a play, after all, and that’s why I do it: it brings me so much joy.

A reminder, you can catch Jerk Off! at Underbelly Bristo Square (Dairy Room) from 11:35 (80mins) on August 5 – 17, 19- 24, 26 – 30. Tickets are Available Through the Underbelly Box Office.