"I don’t think I was funny until my dad died. I was painfully shy. Grief made me funny."
The Wellington-based comedian uses dark humour to create a sense of camaraderie and therapy around loss in her show Dead Dads Club.
The show draws inspiration from the death of her father, who committed suicide when she was 15.The comedy coping mechanism kicked in almost instantly after her dad’s death, she said.
"You are joking about it that day, but in amongst all the sadness. We often feel really guilty for making light of it, even though it’s a really normal thing to do."
But because it was no longer raw, the comedy was silly rather than intense.
"It’s absolutely not about alienating people, it’s finding that shared experience. It’s kind of like what to expect when you’re expecting."
Harpur (35) devised the show last year, but the themes have been apparent in her comedy for a while.
She first performed a musical number Dead Dads Club Theme in her act, sandwiched between jokes about cats and yoga, in 2010. Harpur won best comedy at the Dunedin Fringe in 2011 with her show Immortal Combat, which was about "the pursuit of immortality".
"I’ve always had the theme of death. I guess it’s what I’m interested in."
Her current show uses story-telling, stand-up comedy, sketches and music to guide audiences through the five stages of grief, while acknowledging there is no clear path.
It addressed things that were and were not helpful to say to someone who had just lost a parent, she said.
"Saying that ‘everything happens for a reason’ or ‘they’re in a better place’ and trying to make them feel better just doesn’t work. Instead try to find a greeting card that has a lot of swear words in it."
People who were in "the club" could relate to each other to the point they were "speaking a different language", she said.
"The people where the worst thing they’ve had is have a goldfish die, they freak out a wee bit and you really do feel sorry for them, but at the same time they don’t have a dead dad, so they can just feel good about that."
Sport was an "oppressive" force in the house, which is apparent in a line in her show’s blurb: "con: dead dad, pro: I don’t have to be quiet during the rugby".
• Dead Dads Club is playing tomorrow through Tuesday at 8pm at the Fortune Theatre.
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