We recently connected with The Non-Fiction Show (Julie Pearson and Katie Visser) and have shared our conversation below.

The Non-Fiction Show, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

Creating a space where performers of all kinds show up as themselves onstage has been so rewarding. Every month in our show, essayists, storytellers, poets, musicians, and experts on niche topics all show up to entertain and share. The relationship between performer and audience that emerges every month never ceases to satisfy and edify all of us. We cannot stress enough what a cool, creative, warm, receptive community has formed around this show.

The hour after the show every month is a special one, where performers and audience mingle at the bar and relate over the work each performer shared. Strangers connect over shared childhood anxieties or past heartbreaks, and a fleeting sense of intimacy emerges. That never fails to feel meaningful, like we’re doing exactly what we set out to do.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Hello! We are Katie Visser and Julie Pearson, co-hosts and co-producers of The Non-Fiction Show, a monthly variety hour here in Los Angeles. We’re both writers and comedians, who’ve written, produced, and performed comedy in Chicago and LA for the last decade. We learned that we share a love of non-fiction writing and wanted a place to share that with audiences, so we created The Non-Fiction Show!

In a cozy, speakeasy environment, we feature well-known comedians, essayists, poets, and musicians. Our lineup even includes experts on unexpected topics in our monthly Info segment, where previous performers have shared the behind-the-scenes skinny on things like puppetry, magic, astrology, and professional wrestling. With recurring performers and repeat audience, a community has formed around the show over the last two and a half years, enjoying laughter, tears, and catharsis in real time.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

We met through fellow Chicago comedy ex-pats in 2019 and discovered we both have a passion for writing personal essays – and we wanted an excuse to share them. We had a goal of creating a space where artists in all different areas could get their work onstage. This concept grew into the idea for a non-fiction themed variety show. Cool idea, right? But then we had to figure out what that meant.

We had a sold-out debut show in January 2020 (Wow!) and couldn’t wait to do it again. Then COVID came along and shut it all down. As the months dragged on, we were afraid we’d never see another human being again – much less a whole audience. But once theaters started to open up, we set out the face masks and hand sanitizer for the audience and gave it another go in December of 2021. After tinkering with the format, we settled into a new venue that we love and began running monthly in 2022.

One of the biggest hurdles a theater producer tackles on any project is finding a good space. Theaters change hands quickly, and there are fewer spaces than ever since the mass theater, bar, and restaurant closures in 2020. So when we learned at the end of last year that our longtime venue was changing ownership, we were terrified. We were down to the wire to find a space for our January show, which was already booked with an incredible out-of-town lineup. What were the odds that a space was available at the exact day and time that we needed? But the show had to go on! And thanks to the power of small local theaters and the network of theater producers in Los Angeles, we pulled it off!

Plus, since February we have been back in our former wine bar venue – under new management and with a phenomenal new team bringing amazing live performances to the stage in LA.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

The best thing that the community at large can do to support artists and create a thriving creative ecosystem is to SEE LIVE THEATER!

As writers and performers, we appreciate the value of an immediate audience reaction to our work by sharing it onstage. And with the film and television industry in a slow spot currently due to the after-effects of both the pandemic and the recent strikes, many of us performing in this show and others like it would LOVE to write and produce TV shows and movies, but we have to play the long game on that front and be patient. Meanwhile, writing funny and poignant and meaningful work and sharing it with others is possible right now TODAY by doing theater.

So we would say, please come see our show, and see others like it. Buy tickets to local plays, variety hours, music concerts, poetry readings, standup comedy shows, and more – artists are ready to entertain you right now in an intimate, immediate way that you’ll love!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thenonfictionshow.substack.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_nonfictionshow/

Image Credits

Andy Forsberg (all images)