Its been a while since I updated people on what I’m working on so I thought that as I’d finally sorted out my site I’d add an extra blog post too! It’s been a while since I wrote new stand up as I’ve been working on Gaffer, the football play about homophobia which will now be touring nationally and internationally in 2015. I’ve been doing bits of musical comedy but finding it, at present a little unsatisfying. I also don’t feel it’s likely that paid gigs are going to be coming my direction in the near future. I’ve applied for a fair few and am getting nothing back so I can only assume that people don’t think I’m ready (all have been people I’ve gigged for). It’s a little daunting to be honest, I’ve spent so long with comedy as a hobby that looking at it from a financial and career point of view is terrifying. That said I’ve realised that I’m more interested in mixing my two passions – standup and theatre. Lots of stand ups I know are really critical of new stand ups who perform full length shows for not learning the craft on the circuit. I wonder if there is another way – because I’ve a huge amount of experience of theatre and the show I want to do is not straight stand up maybe it makes sense to try and develop my craft in a theatrical rather than a club setting. That said I’d love to do a weekend club set playing songs and dicking around.
Anyway, at present I find myself with a few different sets:
- MC – This I’m enjoying more and more although I sometimes think I go for the safe gig and retreat from being quite as explosive as I can be. Afterwards I wonder why my improv is paired back when I do it but upped when I’m doing set pieces.
- Storytelling #1 – This is my meta theatrical storytelling set which has become really easy to do and works every time.
- Storytelling #2 – This is a work in progress. The first draft lasted about 25 mins so it’s gradually getting to a manageable length at around 15 mins. I think this could be quite special but need the time to finish it!
- Musical Comedy – This is the loosest thing I do at the moment. I have a series of songs (which you can hear on here) which I loosely weave together with a bit of chatting. It’s not quite clever or structured enough and is a little work in progress. All the songs need pairing down but I feel confident I could get a strong 20 out of this eventually.
Finally an idea I had the other week about mixing storytelling with music and looping and vocals, in a one-man band style show, maybe mixing in projection and possibly imagery.. The first draft is below here so see what you think – it’s not that funny because I did it in about 20 mins and was mostly focused on the music…. I’m ideally looking for an illustrator to work with to create the background montage – I’d want to make it as a recorded show but then translate it into a live 50 minute piece. There would be bits of stand up in there as well (although not jokes, I don’t do them, just long winding anecdotes that end with the phrase, “so yeah…” and an eerie silence.
I’m in Edinburgh next week so do drop me a facebook message and we can go for a beer or two (and I’m performing, see the gig calendar on my homepage!). Right that’s enough from me. Take care, Sam x