Marjolein Robertson on Standing up for Shetland

As Shetland's only female stand-up, Marjolein Robertson could hardly be more of an outlier in UK comedy. She first began performing live in Amsterdam, before training in improv with the Upright Citizens Brigade in New York. She made her Edinburgh Fringe debut before she'd ever done any stand-up on her home islands. And bizarrely, she was doing hour-long shows before she attempted a 20-minute club set. "So I find it really scary trying to win over an audience," she admits.

From "the middle of nowhere, at the end of the line", the spark behind Shetland's nascent comedy scene relates how she's recently established an improv troupe, a monthly comedy night and contributes short online sketches to BBC Scotland. Playing to the same audiences time and again in Shetland requires a high turnover of material though: "But you don't really get the chance to hone it" she sighs.

Her 2016 Fringe debut was to "see if I could do an hour's worth of comedy. But also to see if I could make friends to gig with in the future". Indeed, so rarely does she leave the islands, that when she does she has to make it count, taking every chance to gig along the east coast of the US and in New Zealand. Nevertheless, the performance of her latest show, It's Time, at this year's Glasgow Comedy Festival in March, was the first time she'd done any of the material.

She admires the likes of Eddie Izzard and Paul Foot especially, "how off-the-wall he can be about such an everyday topic", and is uncertain if she's surreal by design or life experience, not least after her troubled time in Amsterdam, where her mother hails from. But she's certainly unique – relatable, vulnerable but unapologetically otherworldly, weaving personal anecdotes around a retelling of the traditional Shetland tale The Hillsook Wedeen (or Hillswick Wedding), which features mischievous, nocturnal, troll-like creatures called trows.

Although her third show is the first time Robertson has incorporated 19th-century folktales into her stand-up, the accomplished musician's affection for the magical, out-of-time plight of her fellow fiddler in the story – "one I grew up with, which is so intertwined with what life was like in Shetland" – is so deep that she's performing a straighter, more traditional version in the Fringe's first week as well.

Before a show, she still struggles with nerves. But her music and youth theatre background afforded her some basic stagecraft at the start. And she polished that at UCB, where she learned to emphasise "physicality when telling jokes, that's it's not just your voice that makes them laugh".

If It's Time shares how Robertson arrived at the point she is now – the failed relationship, the useless arts degree, heavy drinking and going stir-crazy away from home in a foreign land – it's also a statement of intent about taking comedy seriously. She's committed to living in Shetland but anticipates making more frequent trips south in six-to-eight week blocks to sharpen her act, with "Edinburgh becoming less of a party this year and more of me putting myself out there."

Marjolein Robertson: It's Time, PBH Free Fringe, Bar Bardos Complex (venue 32), 4-25 Aug (not 14), 8:30pm, Free 
Shetland Storytelling: Hillswick Wedding, PBH Free Fringe, Bar Bados, 4-10 Aug, 3.45pm, Free