EDINBURGH 2026: Jennifer Jane Q&A

BWW catches up with Jennifer Jane to chat about bringing Happy Tea to the 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Tell us a bit about Happy Tea.

Happy Tea is a one hour storytelling show that’s about my life as an English woman in Montana in the USA and a few crazy things that have happened to me there. It essentially follows a ten year period of my life, about my relationships, being a caregiver and being very much a fish out of water in Montana. That period of my life was also made into a feature length documentary so this is a more comedic look at that same time frame. I love sharing the story, in part, because so many people have told me that it’s helped them to hear my story, and allowed them to laugh at themselves and their own crazy lives a little bit more :-)

Your story is pretty wild- how do you find the balance in telling people of what to expect a head of time with keeping some twists for the audience?

I like to keep it as high level as possible when telling people about it and not give away too much. I am one of those people who never watches movie trailers as I like it all to be a surprise when I watch the actual movie, then I feel completely immersed as I have no idea what’s coming next, so in my mind people would ideally come without much context.  But, if someone has read about things online and knows some of the twists and turns from the documentary or other sources then that is just the way it is, the comedy hour and the jokes are layered on top of the information already out there so the added detail and the jokes will hopefully still be interesting and enjoyable to anyone who already knows some of the big story points.

What sets it apart from other comedy shows at the festival?

I think my show is fairly unique as it is one weird, intense, crazy true story told through a comedic lens. Objectively the subjects in it are pretty heavy, so it is not your usual setting for a comedy show, but hopefully people will find it funny, insightful and also enjoy the actual story. I grew up in the UK but have been living in the United States in Montana for the past 15 years, that alone is fairly unique as not many Brits move to Montana. Most Brits who move to the US head to California, Texas, New York or Florida…  I looked up the stats, and less than 0.2% Brits who move to the US migrate to Montana which does feel quite different to a lot of the US. Then on top of that is the core story of the show has been previously made into a documentary so it does have lots of unique elements that I hope people are intrigued by in the show :-)

Do you think you know what to expect from the Fringe?

Ha, probably not. I think like everyone else I am doing my best to be prepared and research as much as I can but I am sure things will come up that have not even entered my head. I do expect it to be hard, so I guess that is good in a sense, I am not expecting this to be easy at all, so I am at least going in with eyes wide open on that. In my business, Proper Good, we do a lot of ‘pre-mortems’, i.e asking the question at the beginning of a new project ‘If this goes wrong, why will it go wrong?’. I have done a ‘pre-mortem’ with the Fringe and listed out a ton of things I am trying to get ahead of. But, without a doubt things will go wrong, and when they do I will just try to laugh about it, learn and move on…  I guess we will just see how it goes!

What would you like audiences to take away from your show?

As cliché as it sounds, I would love the audience to take away some positivity from the show and remember a few core jokes that really resonated with them. The story of my show has quite a few dark twists and turns and certainly has some dark comedy mixed in but it’s ultimately a feel good show. I hope they laugh at me and the oddities of life and enjoy a good story.

Jennifer Jane: Happy Tea runs at Edfringe from 6-30 August

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