17/11/06
Bringing comedy to people who clearly don't want it -
Categories: News -
Stephen Grant
@ 02:52:36 am
I appreciate that my blogging frequency has dropped off considerably since my stint at the Edinburgh Festival, but then I'm discovering that leaving a story for a few days before I post it up is having some advantages.
For a start, it allows me to be somewhat more pragmatic and level-headed when writing about something that has irked me. It might come across that many things do; but that really isn't the case.
And what's more, getting irked about something that quite obviously won't be artistically inspiring after the event isn't likely to generate much empathy, and with reason. So let me tell you about early last week, when I went to Bristol.
The gig was a special gig organised by a credit card company who were organising a set of 'laugh and lunch' days across the UK. The idea being, that random punters picked from the street get to come inside a tent in the middle of a shopping centre and watch free comedy with some free food thrown in too, in the afternoon. The comedy had to be clean too, in both content and language.
A rather ambiguously worded sign outside asked punters to 'try stand-up comedy for a change' - and there was the first problem; some people thought that THEY were having to do the comedy. But then, with Patrick Monahan compering, some of them ended up having to anyway. Patrick - bless him - is quite mad. It's the right sort of mad for comedy; engaging, high energy, and charismatic. But it also has the side effect of him not knowing how long he's been on; if you've ever seen Patrick attempt to do a 'swift 5 minute intro' then you're unlikely to have spent only 5 minutes doing it. Additionally, his take on the standard compering fayre of asking people where they are from is made especially bizarre by virtue of the fact that he doesn't know where anywhere is.
There's *involving* people in the show, and making them part of it, and suffice to say not one of the shows went by without Patrick getting people on the stage.
Now, it has to be said, that despite the 'room' having good lights and sound, and the line-up being half-decent (the lineup was : Patrick compering, with Keith Fields, Paul Sinha, and myself, rotating two acts each over three shows), the main variations from 'that which we know' were as follows:
* Nobody is drunk/drinking
* Everybody is eating (and no-one laughs with a mouth full of quiche)
* Everybody is stood (no chairs)
* It's midday
* It's a tent
* It's free to get in
That in itself made getting laughs very tricky. And this is where someone like me can come to pieces. My timing goes AWOL without feedback; it's times like this when I massively envy people like Jo Enright who are so polished and full of natural 'acting skills' they can do their show just as well to a near-empty room as a full one.
There were lots of plus-sides though. Naturally, it was a good earner; and the organiser was Andrea Payne, who up until this year was my flatmate every Edinburgh.
And seeing Paul do his stuff - even to a room full of people who would have laughed if they weren't gob-full of free crisps - is always a joy. Here's the widest smile Paul managed backstage.
Oddly, from the audience perspective, this was quite a success. People were suddenly given a free lunch and 3 well-above-average acts to watch and even if it was tough for *us*, it was great for them. I'd like to believe that some of them made a mental note to go and watch live comedy in a comedy club after the event. I'm going to cling to that thought.
At the end of it, I rang my agent and sang a little song down the phone to explain how it went. I'd like to say I've put it all behind me, but you can actually see a video me making 10 minutes feel like 30, at their website, which is now fully functional. Highly recommended to those of you who slow down to look at car-crashes. You'll have to find it on the site, but the clue is where I was.
Comments:
· http://www.myspace.com/raypeacock 
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17/11/06 @ 03:53 Permalink
17/11/06 @ 10:07 · http://www.myspace.com/raypeacock Permalink
18/11/06 @ 01:54 · http://www.myspace.com/raypeacock Permalink
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