Interview with Tom Nemec

Ahead of bringing A Cat In A Box to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, I caught up with Tom Nemec to discuss transforming personal trauma into theatre, balancing dark humour with emotional honesty, and why survival stories continue to resonate so deeply with audiences.

What first made you decide to turn such a deeply personal story into a solo play?

I think I reached a point where I didn’t want to keep pretending everything was okay. A lot of the show is about realizing that the family story I had been carrying wasn’t really true — or at least not complete. Hurricane Sandy became a turning point for me. When my house was destroyed and I felt abandoned by my family, something cracked open. I started seeing the pattern more clearly. The play came from that need to stop hiding it, stop minimizing it, and finally tell the truth in my own voice.

A Cat in a Box balances dark humour with painful subject matter. Why was comedy important in telling this story?

Because that’s how I survived a lot of it. The humour isn’t there to soften the truth or make the trauma cute. It’s there because it just happens, sometimes the absurdity is part of the truth. There are moments in the show where I’m looking at something painful, and the laughter can come from seeing how ridiculous, strange, or almost cartoonish it was. Comedy gives the audience a way in. It lets people breathe, and then the heavier moments can land harder.

The show explores trauma and healing without becoming hopeless. How important was it to leave room for hope?

I don’t think I left room for hope. Hope is there. Hope is there for all of us. Irrational hope is what kept me alive. The show goes into very dark places, but it doesn’t end there. For a long time, I felt like that little boy was still trapped in the box. But eventually I started looking for answers. Therapy, teaching, recovery, studying early childhood — all of that mattered. I don’t think healing means everything gets neatly fixed. But I do think things can get better. In the play, I say, “Now I want to live.” That’s the hope.

Performing autobiographical material night after night must be incredibly exposing. How do you protect your emotional well-being onstage?

Great question, and occasionally people will take me aside and ask me how I deal with it. I don’t deal with it — just joking. It can be overwhelming when I’m rehearsing, whether with my director or by myself, and I get to the more difficult points in the middle of the show. I remind myself, wait a minute, there’s a resolution at the end of the show that I get to share with an audience, and I get to feel 100% how great it feels to be where I am now.

A good part of my recovery has been creating consistent, positive self-talk. I have a bad habit of ruminating on things, so very often I just have to stop myself and say, “You’re doing the show. You’re gonna feel great after. This is what performing is.”

What does the title A Cat in a Box represent to you?

As an adult when talking about my childhood at some point, I started using the analogy that I was raised isolated like a cat in the box. I wasn't taught the basic tools that a person needs to survive and have a healthy mental outlook. Picture a little animal trapped inside something, with a hole for food, a roof over its head, and people assuming that should be enough. But it isn’t enough. The cat is alive, but it’s scared, ignored, and slowly withdrawing.

Audiences often connect strongly to stories of dysfunctional families because they recognise parts of themselves in them. Has audience feedback surprised you?

What surprised me is how many people don’t talk about their own family pain until they see someone else say it out loud. People will come up after the show and tell me something very personal. The stories are often parallel, they recognize the feeling — being alone, being dismissed, being told it wasn’t that bad. That part has been powerful. At the very beginning, I talk about how I hated my childhood home and sometimes people just be late to that. And that's enough they hated it but they don't know why exactly yet.

How did working with director Jim Mendrinos help shape the emotional rhythm of the piece?

Working with Jim was a collaboration. At first, working with another person, and even the thought of it, was very uncomfortable for me. Coming from stand-up comedy, you create your own material, and you perform it, and if the club owner doesn’t like it, they just don’t have your back and that’s it.

But over time I had to admit that art is not created in a vacuum. Everyone has collaborators, whether it’s someone you hire to work with, or your spouse, or your best friend, or even a nudge from an audience member.

When it’s your own life, everything can feel equally important, so together we found the shape of it. He guided me to look at what would drive the story forward, but at the end of the day he would always tell me, “This is your show, and you’re welcome to do it the way you want to.”

Solo theatre places enormous pressure on the performer. What’s the biggest challenge of holding an audience alone for the entire show?

The biggest challenge is working on the show so much that you know the story is enough to carry you through. You want to be sure that the audience is really going to get your message. I took great pains into making sure the show is not a cry for sympathy. But rather celebration of my survival. There’s nowhere to hide in a solo show. No other actors come in to shift the energy. It’s just you, the audience, and the truth of what you’re saying. I am present and connected the whole time. I go out there with complete confidence in my story. I have something important to tell them.

The show suggests that healing is ongoing rather than neatly resolved. Was that important to portray honestly?

Yes. I didn’t want to write a neat little ending where everything is magically healed. In my experience, that would be false. Healing is ongoing. It came through a lot of different things over time — and for everybody, those things can be different.

I’m very happy where I am in my life, but it would have been great if I grew up in a normal, loving family. Some people don’t believe those families exist, but I’m a teacher, and I see a lot of them. It would have been great to write a show about a family that came together — maybe one of us got cancer, and everyone rallied around them, taking turns sleeping in the hospital room, sneaking in cake and ice cream, and when one of us cried, we all cried together.

But that wasn’t my experience. In my family, when you cried, you cried alone.

What do you think theatre can offer audiences that conversations about trauma sometimes can’t?

Theatre lets people feel something before they have to explain it. A conversation about trauma can become clinical or defensive very quickly. But in a theatre, people can just sit in the dark and experience another person’s story. They don’t have to respond right away. They don’t have to have the perfect words. They can laugh, get uncomfortable, recognize something, and maybe leave seeing their own story differently.

If someone is nervous about seeing a show tackling heavy themes, what would you say to them?

One thing I tell people is, if you feel that way, come to the show — you’ll leave lighter. You will leave empowered. I really believe that. There’s an emotional bonding that happens between me and the audience. It reminds me of the first time I ever said something about my family to another person, and they just nodded their head with agreement and understanding. I didn’t even have to say anything else. That feeling is in the show. It’s a relief. It’s a release. It’s not about sitting alone in the dark with pain. It’s about realizing somebody else understands.

If audiences leave carrying one thought or feeling after A Cat in a Box, what would you most want it to be?

I think everyone is going to leave with a different feeling or thought, and that’s okay. But some of the things I’d like people to carry with them are that they’re not alone, and that they can change. I say in the play that I’m not defective. I was poorly programmed. That’s what I want people to understand — untreated childhood trauma can make things in your life more difficult, but it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you.

As children in dysfunctional families, I think we tell ourselves, when I get older, it’ll be better. When I get older, things will change. And then you get older and you don’t understand why you’re still having the same problems, because things don’t magically change. Age doesn’t automatically bring wisdom.

I believe we are all inherently good, and we’re innocent when we come into the world. Our environment conditions us and programs us to think and feel and be a certain way. But that doesn’t have to be the end of the story.

A huge thank you to Tom Nemec for taking the time to chat with me about A Cat in a Box. Combining emotional honesty, sharp humour, and deeply human storytelling, this sounds set to be one of the Fringe’s most powerful and personal solo performances. A Cat in a Box runs at Edinburgh Festival Fringe from 7–15 August at theSPACE @ Surgeon’s Hall. Tickets and further information can be found via https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/a-cat-in-a-box