Interview: Spring Day

Spring Day has a pretty dark sense of humour. Growing up in an abusive home in rural Missouri, she learnt to make "fertiliser out of shit". And Spring Day is her real name, "a great stagename in theory but a nightmare algorithmically". Her hippy father was only dissuaded in the hospital from calling her and Misty, her twin sister, Spring and Sprung.

And "I don't like to lose" the London-based American comedian reflects. "If you ignore pain, the pain wins, so when something really fucked up happens, it's a relief to talk to an audience about it. There's also a communal release we can all acknowledge. The painful reality of life is that all security is an illusion and we just have to keep cracking on in spite of it."

But nearly 23 years into performing stand-up, Day hasn't previously spoken on stage about how, between the ages of 13 and 26, she was in an evangelical cult.

Appearing on Live At The Apollo last year raised her profile. And Exvangelical, Day's first Fringe hour outside of the Free Festival, "is a show I've been hinting at for a long time.

"I didn't think I could do it [in the UK] because I didn't think anyone would understand. But then I started meeting other exvangelicals and realised there's a community here too."

Part of the New Apostolic Reformation, which advocates for spiritual warfare bestowing Christian dominion over all aspects of society, eroding America's separation of church and state, she doesn't name the high-control group she belonged to, giving it a close, "silly" pseudonym instead.

That's because of their lawyers and so members of similar groups can't disassociate from her specific experiences. And because "every time they had some kind of scandal, be it financial or allegations of sexual abuse, they just change the name.

"My particular cult had a lot to do with [the] January 6 [attack on the Capitol Building in Washington]" she adds. "People that brought me into the church remain huge Trump supporters".

As someone with cerebral palsy, it ultimately became apparent to Day that there "was no way for me to exist in such a system, let alone win.

"It was a hamster wheel of being told I wasn't good enough. I was infantilised, treated as a second-class or even third-class human because I hadn't healed myself. I wasn't married, hadn't given birth to the next generation of Christian soldiers. And I was just too tired to do it anymore.

"But it took years for me to leave. Especially if you're young, they really implant ideas. They're really, really hard to detach from and it's something I'm still continually dealing with."

She's still deliberating about whether to share some experiences.

"Dark comedy is all about creation and release of tension. And when you've got something incredibly dark, you've got all the tension in the world," she reasons. "Part of me wants to talk about it. Part of me wants to get it over with in a couple of lines because I don't want to be doing an hour show about it in the future. I just want done with it."

Nevertheless, she stresses that not only is she "safe, but thriving". Having begun stand-up in Tokyo, the Japanese speaker is now on "OK" terms with her parents and has a burgeoning parallel career as a television writer. She also writes with her husband, Jerk creator and stand-up Tim Renkow, who has more severe cerebral palsy but similarly identifies as American "redneck white trash".

"I'm married to a great man and we just bought a new flat in London," she reflects. "Life's pretty fucking good. I've fallen into the role of being a trad wife because my husband's more disabled than I am. Sometimes I get angry that I've been conditioned more than I would like. But everything is collaborative between us, which is rare for stand-ups. And I race him to the toilet every morning and win."

As part of her "deprogramming" by psychologists, she's examined the motives of those that recruited her to the cult, questioning "whether they were nefarious or malicious or power-hungry. And I don't think they were. They genuinely believe it."

She won't be pressing anyone in a similar situation to escape. "Because if you tell someone to leave, they'll dig their heels in, you're confirming their sense of supremacy.

"But I know that people who have belonged to these groups have attended my shows. And I want them to know that, if and when the time comes for them to leave, they can and they won't be alone. There are others just like them."