Reykjavík Grapevine - 24.05.2019, Blaðsíða 17

17 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 08— 2019
gonna throw that in!’”
As he now returns to writing for
his upcoming hour, “Eagle Fire Iron,”
at this summer’s Edinburgh Fringe
Festival, Ari is feeling both dread and
excitement at the prospect of crafting
new material. “I think that a lot of the
confidence you build as a performer
just comes from having done the mate-
rial so many times that you can kind
of anticipate what kind of reaction
you’re gonna get,” he says. “My confi-
dence will shift and fluctuate depend-
ing on where I am with my material
at the time. But the most interesting
time is definitely when you’re trying
out new stuff and you’re struggling a
bit. It doesn’t matter how experienced
you are, you always have to start over
again. I think in the next few weeks I’m
gonna be doing a lot of new material.
It’s going to be absolute mayhem and
then it’s gonna be fun to weed out what
I’m going to use.”
Family and
fodder
Ari is lucky, however, to have an audi-
ence in his partner of 17 years, Linda,
with whom he tests out all his material
and who is often instrumental in help-
ing him hone his bits.
“She has a massive role and I’m very,
very happy that we have this working
relationship as well, because it has
produced some really good stuff,” he
says. “She will not enjoy all of the stuff
that I come up with but the stuff that
turns on the bulb is stuff that works
for her, that’s usually something that
develops really fast. If she thinks
something is funny, it’s just a gut feel-
ing. And if she doesn’t care for other
material, you know, it doesn’t matter.
Although she will occasionally say,
‘That’s shit! Take that out!’, it’s usually
along the lines of, ‘Oh, that’s really
funny! I really enjoy that bit.’”
They currently have their hands full
with their second child, a nine-month
old girl, and the mayhem of raising
two small children is proving itself to
be ripe with material.
“Being a parent is so much admin,
you just have to do so much stuff,” he
sighs. “Every day at the end of the day
when we put both of the girls down,
they’re both asleep, we usually have to
do the dishes and it’s just insane the
amount of dirty dishes that we have to
do. We’ve started calling this the soap
opera of our lives. ‘Doing the Dishes: a
new episode every day!’ Every time I do
the dishes now I put on The Bold and the
Beautiful theme song. Like, ‘Tonight on
Doing The Dishes: the dishes!’ We’ve
been trying to write a bit about that for
months.”
Although his daily life inspires his
bits, he doesn’t tend to write deeply
personal material, unlike comedians
who use the darkest realms of their
soul as fodder. “You have to write about
your own life a little bit, although I
tend to just go with whatever I think
is funny,” he says. “Some people I’ve
seen at the Fringe have deeply personal
shows and I really admire that. I might
go for more personal stuff at some
point. But at the moment, I don’t really
control what becomes my set.”
Holding on tight
Along with getting down to brass tacks
of writing his new Fringe show, this
year Ari will finally be filming his previ-
ous show at Iceland’s National Theatre.
“I’m excited about filming the show
because, even though I’ve performed it
numerous times in Australia, Scotland,
and England, I don’t really have footage
of it,” he says. “It’s fun to do an English
show in Iceland because I rarely do it. I
think the main challenge is just to film
it and be done with it. Some comedi-
ans are quite disciplined in a way that
they will do specials regularly and do
albums and they will produce some
content. I want to do a little bit more of
that. At this point I’m gonna try, maybe
every two years, to do something and
have some sort of recording.”
Producing recordings has been a
challenge for Ari as he has truly been
enjoying being a live performer, and
letting his material exist in a way that
it can shift and change over time rather
than remain static.
“For the last four years, I’ve been
very happy to focus on stand-up,” he
says. “In a way, your stuff lasts longer.
You can polish it for more periods
of time, and once you put it on TV so
many people have seen it and you start
maybe getting insecure about using it.”
The horizon
Ari’s plans beyond this point in time
are rather open. He has his hands
full with fatherhood, but he has also
reached a stage in his career where he
has accomplished many of his goals.
Still, he has aspirations on the hori-
zon. He wants to do more experimental
shows, trying out new, rough material
for a live audience. He would like to
venture back into television, sooner
rather than later. He would like to work
with a writing partner or director to
develop a more theme-based show. But
for now, Ari is living in the moment.
“I’m gonna try to enjoy the next
couple of months,” he says. “I’m just
going to start focusing on the new
hour for the Fringe. So I think June and
July will be a mixture of trying out new
material and then having some holi-
days with family. Then I’m just gonna
go to Edinburgh and hold on as that
train takes off. Hold on tight.”
“It went reaLLy weLL UntIL
I fInIshed My MaterIaL
and then I stood onstage
whILe they booed Me for
twenty seConds and then
I got gonged three seConds
before the fIve MInUtes.
It was a nasty Crowd.”