BriTANick - the super funny sketch duo are back at the Edinburgh Fringe with a brand new show

US comedy duo Nick Kocher and Brian McElhan (a.k.a. BrITANick) are back in Edinburgh with their new show Dummy where they explore questions such as: How much control is our past trauma exerting over our present behaviour? How do close partnerships navigate the rocky waters of jealousy? And how many sex-with-puppets jokes is too many sex-with-puppets jokes?

With an Emmy nomination and writing credits that include SNL and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, this is one not to be missed. We caught up with the boys to find out more about their new show.

Dummy tackles some pretty deep subjects, what inspired you to explore these themes in a comedy show?

Honestly, they started organically emerging to the point where we couldn’t ignore them anymore. The show was originally just funny, disparate ideas that made us laugh, but we realised if we wanted the show to glue together and have any kind of point to it, we needed to go deeper. We often take a look back at what we have written and realise there’s a human truth trying to emerge out of it. And then we just have to lure that human truth out. It's like catching a fish, but instead of using a fishing pole, you're sitting and thinking about your childhood trauma.

How did those early experiences back at summer camp shape your style?

We went to the most amazing summer camp as kids called “The Atlanta Workshop Players” (AWP). It shaped us profoundly because it let us explore every type of performance imaginable. We took lots of classes - improv, juggling, mime, musical cabaret, and African Dance (no, you cannot see the videos of that).

Before then, our parents had been sending us to sports camps where we would just cower on the sidelines in fear. AWP created a wonderful safe space for us to finally be ourselves.

Your sketches are known for having multiple jokes at play simultaneously. Can you walk us through your creative process when crafting a sketch?

There’s never a singular process. The most reliable thing we do is actually try to start in a non-funny place. We try to intellectually ground the sketch in its most relatable elements and conflict. Once we understand that, jokes can start building on top of it. We find that the more solid and serious the foundation is, the sillier and more insane the jokes on top of it can be.

Your relationship forms the core of Dummy. How much of your real-life dynamics and history do we see on stage?

That’s actually a hard one to answer. With both this show and our last Fringe show, we used our real-life relationship as a guiding undercurrent throughout the show. The last one was about the feeling of when a best friend is moving at a different speed in life than you. This one is about how our childhood trauma can shape our current behaviour and relationships. We take real elements of how we feel, shape them to fit the story, heighten them for comedic effect, and then come back to our actual experiences to refine them, so by the end it’s kind of hard to remember what’s real and what’s us performing. That’s healthy, right?

Any chance we’ll see a BriTANicK movie or sitcom in the near future?

We currently have two movies and two TV shows in different stages of development right now, however we’re not allowed to talk about any of them yet. Which is annoying because talking about them would really help us sell tickets. That’s the most annoying part about this industry – this secrecy stuff. I mean, it’s not like these are state secrets, they’re sitcoms you’re going to have on in the background while you’re scrolling Instagram.

BriTANicK: Dummy will be performed at 8pm in the Pleasance Courtyard (Above) from the 31st July – 25th August (not 14th)

Booking link: https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/britanick-dummy