Improv comic Greg Tavares is paying his audience to watch his Edinburgh Fringe show about his near-death experience this summer.

 

Tavares, from Charleston, South Carolina, USA is offering £5 to the first 10 people who sit through each show. He says “I really believe telling this story is helping me deal with my PTSD and have always wanted to create more access to the arts.  What could create more access than offering people a fiver to come sit and listen to my story."

The performer was on vacation with his wife in Costa Rica when he almost drowned in the ocean. After this near-death experience he relived the event over and over again. For months he woke up screaming in the middle of the night and suffered flashbacks. Instead of going to a therapist he started talking to himself when he was alone and recorded what he said. These recordings of Greg talking frankly about his near-death experience and subsequent PTSD became this script for his solo show I Am The Horrible Thing.  

 

The show is a departure for Tavares who has spent the past 24 years doing Whose Line Is It Anyway-style improv comedy. In this show he can’t hide behind a character or an improv game to entertain the audience. All he has is himself and his real life story.

 

The monologue is part PTSD flashback part stand-up comedy show. Tavares talks directly to the audience telling them that he is trapped in a loop of reliving his near drowning over and over again. Tavares says “It’s like one Greg ended out there in the ocean and whatever new Greg I’m supposed to be hasn’t started yet. I’m in-between Gregs.”

 

Performing this show and bringing it to Edinburgh Festival Fringe is helping Tavares get past the experience. With every performance the traumatic memories become less painful.  Sharing his experience with others has helped him break through the isolation that PTSD can cause. Tavares is enthusiastic about sharing his story with Edinburgh audiences and  believes in making the Fringe more  affordable so he 

 

The Charleston City Paper called I am the Horrible Thing: “an intense, dramatic monologue delivered straight to the audience. Tavares relives those horrifying moments at sea and pairs that retelling with childhood memories of growing up in Hawaii, those memories having surfaced in the aftermath of his near-death experience. It's a compelling journey through one man's recollections and a harrowing life-and-death moment, for both the audience and Tavares.”