American stand-up comedian Sofia May is bringing her hit show 9/11 Birds and the Bees, a dark comedy inspired by where she was on 9/11, when the World Trade Center was attacked by terrorists, back to the Edinburgh Free Fringe.
“Where were you on 9/11? Sitting in school? Sitting on the toilet? Nowhere of note? Well, Sofia May was running – for her life – from the dust cloud and debris as the World Trade Center toppled next to her school in downtown Manhattan. Now, as an adult, she’s processed a lot of that trauma, continues to grieve and is ready to get hilarious. In this award-winning, critically acclaimed stand-up solo hour, Sofia May takes the audience on a gruesome comedic journey of her experience as a tween survivor of history’s most outrageous terrorist attack.”
Where: Flight Club at Laughing Horse @ West Port Oracle
When: 6-30 Aug (not Mon)
Ticket link: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/9-11-birds-and-the-bees
What can you tell us about your show? What is it about and where did the idea come from?
With my middle school at the foot of the Twin Towers, just 400 meters away, 9/11 Birds and the Bees is a dark, punchy 1-hour stand-up solo about my experience as a child survivor of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The show is basically a love letter to the World Trade Center. It is my way of memorializing the towers, the victims, and my own way of coping with that trauma from such a young age through comedy.
The first 9/11 jokes I ever heard were my own and my classmates’, as New York City adolescents, crushed by the enormity of the loss, what we had just been through, just trying to find a bit of light through the emotional rubble. When I started stand-up years ago, I found that I couldn’t stop writing 9/11 jokes. And they were all child-centric, which is an angle that hasn’t been explored before.
After I recognized that pattern, and already had 15-minutes on 9/11, I thought it would be worth digging deeper and seeing what I would create if I had to come up with a full hour. What came of it was a comedic memorial. It became a way to turn something that made my heart hurt into something that gave me and others joy.
How would you sell it to audiences in one paragraph?
Don’t let her wholesome smile on the poster fool you—this is not a wholesome 9/11-show. This is THE 9/11 show. It’s dark. It’s weird. Sometimes offensive. It’s precious. It’s personal. And it all takes place in a venue modeled after the interior of an airplane, for a full immersive 9/11 comedy thrill-ride. It’s the award-winning, sell-out, rave-reviewed, slightly adorable 9/11 spectacular.
Do you enjoy participating in the Fringe? And do you have any moments you particularly remember?
I love the Fringe. This will be my 4th Fringe and it’s lame to put it this way, but it has become my raison de’etre. It’s a pop-up comedy dimension where you get more stage time than you could have ever dreamed, which means that as a comic, you’re just drowning in your favorite activity. You also get to meet amazing comedians and be inspired by them. But the greatest gift the Fringe really has to offer is that it’s one of the rare platforms where comedians can really push the art form of stand-up comedy.
Right now comedy is in a period of degradation, with social-media algorithms privileging content with the lowest hanging fruit because it appeals to the widest audience. On the contrary, the Fringe privileges those doing something unique – followers be-damned. They ask: who is doing something interesting? How can we help them develop that? This is the attitude that has produced the greatest comedic acts ever. And then the combination of this creative encouragement with seemingly infinite stage time really cultivates and fortifies that artistic vision.
Last year, 9/11 Birds and the Bees had a sold-out run, I received an award for
Best Performer from Fringe Europe, and was nominated as Best Newcomer in the British Comedy Guide awards and received multiple rave reviews. It was an extremely touching reception to a piece that meant so much to me. But I would say that the most memorable moment of that run was during a particularly great show, with an incredibly hot crowd; I started to weep in a moment of remembrance of what we lost on 9/11.
I continued the set, with tears streaming down my face, and the punch-lines hitting even harder. But the reason that the tears came is that the audience had been so present with me. Their rapt attention allowed me to be that present with the material, and there was this come-to-Jesus moment of truth that kind of brought me to my knees.
What are you looking forward to the most in Edinburgh?
I can’t wait to perform this every day again. There is such a rapture in the set working, and also the set growing. The way a solo transforms by doing it every day for 3.5 weeks is astounding. There is so much to find, clarify, and double down on. Last year the 9/11 show was a completely different animal by the end of Fringe. I love evolving. That’s gotta be the best part. And also, if your focus is growth, you can never be disappointed with the outcome.
What’s next for the show?
As this will be the second run of 9/11 Birds and the Bees, I expect it to be an even better show by the end of Fringe 2026. Like last year, I will be performing the show in the West Port Oracle Flight Club, which is a venue that is modeled after the interior of an airplane. It’s gotta be the ideal room for a 9/11 show.
So it’s the perfect time and place to do a special taping and record it professionally. In the fall, I’d love to tour with it in Europe again, in the UK, and hopefully also in North America. After that, I will decide if I’m ready to publish the taping, or keep going with it. Maybe I will bring it back to the Fringe next year to improve it further.