Human Sacrifice

"You make a plan, and then you get ready to improvise at a moment’s notice,” says comedian Eddie Izzard. “That’s what I do with the show – I know the overall direction but I can improvise if something happens; if I get an idea I can go off on a tangent. I have five-and-a-half years before [I go into] politics, and I have things roughly planned out until then. But if something that appeals to me comes up – let’s say a role in a film or something – I can adjust. Know what the objective is, and then improvise on the way to the objective.”

Improvising seems to have worked out quite nicely so far for Izzard, who is currently in the middle of taking his new stand-up show Force Majeure around the world. Since beginning in 2013, it has been seen by audiences in 25 countries on five continents, and in January 2015 he’ll be performing it across Australia."

The title of the show is often taken to mean ‘act of God’, but outspoken atheist Izzard doesn’t have much time for the notion of a supreme being. “I feel like maybe to get through this world, where I don’t feel any humane God is coming to help us, we all have to be our own forces of nature to deal with dictators and despots and people who make up religions,” he says.

And to illustrate that, he looks at some of the more bizarre and excessive forms of human behaviour over the centuries, taking a cue from his comedic heroes, the Monty Python gang. “They were doing stuff on religion and other issues with Life Of Brian and that’s what I’ve tried to do with my work – you start off trying to be silly and funny and then you gradually add layers to it,” he says. “With Force Majeure, I start off with human sacrifice, that maybe it was the beginning of fascism: ‘The crops have failed, the weather is bad, the gods must hate us, we’re going to kill Steve.’ It’s totally illogical but surely someone must have come up with that process. ‘But didn’t the gods create Steve as well? Surely they’re going to be very angry if you kill something they created. Maybe we should do a dance instead or bake them a cake?’ But, no, someone thought that endless murder was the best tactic.

“When I say ‘human sacrifice – what was that about?’ the kids in Moscow go, ‘Yeah, it was a bit weird.’ They get it in Istanbul or Oklahoma City or Reykjavik – they get it, and in whatever language. It’s absolutely the same. My theory is humour is human and not national. I keep it universal and that’s what makes it work. But I am playing to more progressive audiences around the world. Mainstream Britain, Australia, Russia, Afghanistan doesn’t get me. But there are people who dig it, and it seems I can play any major city or town in the world and there’ll be enough people who’ve heard of me. And who get it.”