Ahead of Bringing Her Brand-New Show This Is No Time to Panic! to Brighton Komedia on Wednesday, October 1, folk singer-songwriter and comedian Grace Petrie Speaks to We Love Brighton’s Roosa Herranen
When Grace Petrie brings her new show This Is No Time To Panic! to the Brighton Komedia on October 1, you can expect politics, a lot of laughs and possibly a few tears too. Fifteen years of being known as one of the UK’s most outspoken and popular folk musicians has made her try out something new. She’s now blending her protest songs with stand-up comedy… and somehow it works.
Grace and I jump on Zoom ahead of her Brighton Komedia show to talk politics, the queer identity, despair in this state of the world, tea, Brighton and of course, with this city being involved, seagulls.
“It’s hard to imagine writing something that isn’t political”
Grace has been writing political music and protest songs for years, but says the pressure to do so doesn’t come from her audience. “I know they’d probably support anything I do,” she tells me, “It’s more pressure from myself to myself.”
The world, she explains, makes it impossible to turn away: “there’s a lot of feelings, a lot of anger… and if it’s political anger, that’s where the art goes; it’s hard to imagine writing something that isn’t political.”
I ask if Grace thinks the way she approaches activism and identity is something that, in her experience, is helpful to the younger generations. This question takes her back to one of her best-loved songs, Black Tie (2018), which she says was written as a letter to her teenage self.
“It’s kind of amazing how I wrote that song seven years ago, and even now young people tell me they’ve found it and that it makes them feel less alone. I never expected that to happen. I feel extremely privileged to be part of that experience,” she says.
For Grace, identity itself is political. She thinks connecting our identities is important, and says it opened her up to intersectionality and intersectional identity. “It took me a long time to realise that being queer and being a woman are political identities in themselves.”
On despair, escapism and “toxic hope”
With so much of her work rooted in activism, I had to ask how she avoids despair, and if there’s any thoughts she could offer her audience that might struggle with it. “Despair is unequally distributed,” she says. “Some people are more comfortable and disassociated from it. I think the answer is to do things together. When you find other people who are working to make the world better, that’s a tremendous antidote to despair.”
She’s also suspicious of the concept of ‘self-care’ when it becomes just another way of avoiding reality: “Self-care isn’t just baths and Netflix, it’s going out and meeting your community, being part of something bigger.”
That idea is woven into her new show, and she says: “escapism feels like the modern disease.”
And while plenty of audience members come to her for optimism, she’s not always able to give them that in the way that they’re seeking. Her audience might say to her: “it’s really important we get hope from you,” but her answer to that is clear: “Hope can be really toxic if it’s not accompanied by action.”
Brighton, tea and a seagull’s ice cream tax
As Brighton prepares for Grace’s new show, she’s excited to see Brighton! She sums up a Brighton audience in three words: “hot, queer, dog owners”.
Grace has plenty of love for (and stories about) Brighton. She recalls one of her funniest memories here: “A seagull stole an ice cream straight out of my hand. Flake and all!” She remembers it felt like the seagull was basically telling her: “This is our town, we’ll tolerate you being here, but we’re taking an ice cream tax.”
On the subject of food, I wonder what her go-to meals are while traveling, and it turns out that on the road, her tour staples are simple: sushi, fry-ups and endless cups of tea. But what about coffee?
“Tea on tour, tea off tour, tea all day every day,” she laughs. “I don’t drink coffee, but I like the smell of it, and I like making it for my wife.”
This Is No Time To Panic!
Grace’s new show has changed and grown since she first took it out. What is guaranteed though, is an evening that will make you laugh, think and maybe (hopefully) leave feeling galvanised rather than soothed.
As Grace puts it, “Escapism won’t save us.”
Address: Komedia Brighton, 44-47 Gardner St, Brighton and Hove, Brighton BN1 1UN
Tickets: gracepetrie.com
