2014 Edinburgh Fringe

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Seriously Now - just when you thought you've heard and seen it all...

... along comes Petra Kindler, a GERMAN WOMAN living in Ireland who has managed to make Irish people pay her to make them laugh - and not only that, but with added standing ovations! See the video below:

Now she is preparing to make a Big Bang in Edinburgh, which kind of runs in the family (her brother-in-law, after all, is Sergeant Dave Beveridge, the chap who fires the one o'clock gun at Edinburgh Castle)!

Let's kill two elephants with one stone, shall we? Yes, Petra is German. And yes, she is going to mention The War. But beware: her approach might upset some people's preconceptions!

Seriously Now! started as a talk that literary translator and writer Petra Kindler was asked to give during Waterford City's Writers' Festival. This talk morphed into a confessional comedy performance on the joys and perils of cross-cultural creative work, on surviving homemade hurricanes and on the challenging concept of laughing with a German. It received a standing ovation and so many requests for a repeat that Waterford's Garter Lane Arts Centre suggested the production of an extended stage version for their theatre. This was realised with the assistance of Irish playwright and director Jim Nolan - again to a standing ovation in a packed theatre.

In her show, Petra also touches on lighter issues such as the Inquisition, polka dots, stylish lesbian graphic designers, the difference between dental braces and therapy, a coerced visit to Ireland leading to romance, emigration and receiving robust nocturnal career advice from disembodied voices.

You will hear about Petra Kindler's unlikely journey from being a compulsive reader in a family that valued books only as handy missiles to becoming a literary translator of eminent authors such as Booker Prize laureate Anne Enright and Costa Book Award winner Sebastian Barry.

She muses on a 25-year detour through the evil universe of advertising (Mad Men and Women) interspersed with fits of feral writing, resulting in stage plays and stand-up material for German comedians (ja, plural!).

On more than one occasion Petra will share her innermost vexation with smug monoglots who keep parroting the yawning cliche that Germans are devoid of humour, conveniently ignoring the fact that humour tends to occur in the shape of language. There and then she will reveal unto you the awesome truth that is forever lost on the culturally complacent: humour exists in languages other than our own - and so does literature!