Reykjavík Grapevine - sept 2020, Qupperneq 30

Makin! Li!ht Of
Madness
‘My Voices Have Tourettes’ !oes di!ital
Words: Sam O’Donnell Photos: Art Bicnick
“So the show actually started out of
frustration of me not getting gigs,”
explains Dan Zerin, the man who
conceptualised ‘My Voices Have
Tourettes.’ The award-winning
weekly event at the Secret Cellar
showcases comedy by those who
have tourettes, schizophrenia, and
other disorders. His voice shifts
and squeaks at the end of the sen-
tence—a vocal tic, he relays. Living
with Tourettes, Dan has many of
them. “I wanted to create my own
opportunity.”
The comedian has now turned
the hit show into a podcast. “We’ve
actually been talking about it for
like a year and a half,” he says. “But
because a bunch of us have ADD,
we never got around to it.” COVID,
he explains, was the big push to get
the ball rolling.
Raising awareness
‘My Voices Have Tourettes’ started
as a standup comedy show created
by Dan, Hannah Bryndís Proppé
Bailey, who has schizophrenia, and
Elva Dögg Hafberg Gunnarsdóttir,
who also has Tourettes, for the
2018 Reykjavík Fringe Festival.
The idea was to break the stig-
ma around mental illness in a co-
medic way. “The first time I saw
Elva perform on stage, she made
me realise that I wasn’t the only
person with Tourettes...and that’s
something that I want everyone to
experience; that feeling of know-
ing that you aren’t alone,” Dan
says, smiling.
No holds barred
The ongoing gathering ban means
the show hasn’t been able to reach
the audiences it once did, a prob-
lem the new podcast fixes.The pri-
mary difference between the two
formats is the general tone. “The
live show is geared strictly toward
the comedy aspect of things,” he
says. “Whereas in the podcast, we
try to keep that humour, but we
also talk about the serious side of
things.” In a way, the podcast can
be more therapeutic, he empha-
sises, because it’s a way to get ev-
erything out, no holds barred.
The podcast will feature guests
from all walks of life—not just co-
medians. “[It] could have people
who are working in music or a
company or something like that
who want to spread awareness
about what it’s like to work in those
industries [with mental illnesses]
as opposed to just comedy.”
Even after the tourism indus-
try recovers and the Secret Cellar
begins hosting the standup show
again regularly, Dan says he still
plans on making the podcast. It’s
grown beyond a means to perform
without an audience in a time of
global pandemic. “We wanted to
keep something going while we
couldn’t perform on stage, but it’s
been an absolute blast,” he says.
“I definitely think we’re going to
continue and see how far we can
go with it.”
Never alone
Dan’s ultimate goal in all of this
has always been to make people
feel better about themselves, espe-
cially those that have historically
been disenfranchised or stigma-
tised due to their conditions. Oth-
ers feel similarly; he mentions a
group that is currently trying to
change the way people think about
mental illness by removing the
word “suffering” from the lexicon
and instead, simply saying they
are “living” with a disorder or dis-
orders.
Dan recognises the goal here,
but he doesn’t necessarily agree
with it. “I think it’s important to
recognise both,” he explains. In
fact, that ethos is a big part of what
he does with the show. He says he
spent such a long time suffering
from Tourettes, so much so that
suffering began to feel normal. “I
would call it [suffering] because
I had so many years where my
depression and suicidal thoughts
were so powerful...I just thought
that’s how I felt,” he says.
But since starting the show,
he says that pushing others to
overcome their own struggles and
suffering has put him in a different
place. “I would say I’m living with
it now,” he smiles. With the show
and the podcast, he aims to help
others learn to live with whatever
they have as wel l—squea k s
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30The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 07— 2020
Taking the laughs to the interwebs
Comedy
A reflective moment