Author: Sam Freeman
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What next..?
Last week was, challenging. Basically I was meant to do a solo show in Liverpool and while I was there, sadly noone else was and a show is nothing without an audience. It made me think, question really, what I do. I’ve not written a play for 5 years and every time I write something I…
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I’m doing a solo show in September
Hey Everyone, This is a long post (sorry). Just over a year ago I wrote a show, “Truth” which I performed at 81 Renshaw Street on a double bill with my good friend Rob Thomas as a work-in-progress. The show lasted an hour and was a reasonable success, so much so that I decided that…
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Are we all using the wrong tools?
I’ve recently found out that I like gardening. It’s relaxing, pulling out handfuls of weeds to leave a bare patch of earth looking like the set of Apocalypse Now, watering vegetables that steadfastly refuse to flower or fruit and trying to work out what the hell you do to keep things in pots alive. Two months…
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Theatre Marketing: A Brochure Conundrum
(This is part of a series of blogs I’ve mentally entitled “things that might be interesting at a marketing conference” – please retweet if you think this is interesting and comment at the bottom to let me know your thoughts! Thanks, Sam x) (Click image to zoom) I’ve recently started writing the new marketing strategy…
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Would I Book Myself?
It’s been a couple of months since I wrote anything on here – a few reasons really, hyper-busy at work, a few gigs and just generally feeling like I don’t want to write anything – suffice to say the numbers of visits my website has had has really dropped off (apart from in the Ukraine,…
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Who has been the smartest football team of 2017/18
It occurred to me, and I imagine every football fan who doesn’t support a Manchester-based team this year that the odds have been stacked heavily in the favor of Man Utd and Man City. On a very simple level just by the amount that has been spend on the respective teams. It got me thinking…
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10 years ago (or the trials and tribulations of growing older)
I’ve recently been invited to go to a reunion with some people I went to university with. Different people have muted the university reunion over the past 8 years and, apart from going to visit specific people (usually Dan, Neil and Karen) I’ve not tended to go back that often – for the first few…
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13 thoughts I’ve had this week…
In no particular order: I’ve been feeding a pigeon that lives, on its own, in our back garden. I wonder if it’s anti-social, has been bullied by other pigeons or is a cock pigeon who all the other pigeons hate. Or maybe it’s because I keep feeding it. I feed the birds because my Nana…
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My Ideal Theatre
In late December last year the playwright David Hare wrote an extended article for The Guardian offering his thoughts about what his vision for a perfect playhouse would be today. It’s a fascinating concept and a really interesting read (you can read it here). Some elements I struggled with and thought were a little naive…
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Part One
It is 7.35pm and rain is falling heavily. The road has transformed to a shallow ocean, tiny waves pushed from the tyres of the slowly moving traffic, gathering in rivers at the side of the road, flowing downhill, across tarmac and mud and into a ditch filled with misplaced cones, empty beer cans and a…
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2080
It’s the 2nd Jan 2018 and I can’t sleep. I have a hundred things going round my head and I can’t process them or make sense or decisions about them. Here’s a few of the weird things in my head: If I don’t buy a house soon will I never buy a house? I need…
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Resolutions 2018
It’s that time again – the start of a new year, mild hangover, sleepy from fish ‘n’ chips and sat on the sofa watching Notting Hill – it’s a tale of all time. So firstly to assess last year’s resolutions… 2017 Resolutions Compere a gig regularly and get that key skill back. Nope Create 5 short videos that…
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Is Star Wars terrible?
Provocative isn’t it. A month ago I would have clicked on this blog post with venom in my mind and one singular thought: this dickhead is wrong. I’d have insisted that not understanding Star Wars is like not understanding the concept of love, or hating cheesecake, essentially the domain of cold-hearted psychopaths. But last week…
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Film Review: Justice League
Life is about the choices we make, the friends we stand by and the moments where we courageously follow our hearts and take a leap of faith. Which is, I should say, a long way round to saying I decided to go to the cinema and not the gym tonight. Let me answer your first…
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Gig Report – Chorlton, Manchester
I realised on the drive back from tonight’s gig that I’d not written a gig report for a while. I think because my gigs have become so infrequent and I’ve been struggling with them (more on this later) I’ve not felt like writing them, and also I’ve just been so tired. Not tonight though, tonight…
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GIG REVIEW: Performing a show for the first time
So on Wednesday night this week I performed my new show, Truth, for the first time from start to stop. It’s always terrifying when you do anything new in front of any audience, what’s particularly galling is doing some solo hybrid comedy/theatre/storytelling, literally everything can go wrong. So did it? Well…. No, not quite. So…
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Another week of Sam Freeman’s life
I’ve not written a proper “bloggy” post, I realised earlier today, for quite a while. I’ve tended to focus on things with actual purpose or focus, you know things like “my thoughts on marketing” or the classic “please come and see my show on Wednesday at 7pm at 81 Renshaw Street in Liverpool“. I thought…
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10 things about being an arts marketing manager that I now know…
I’m not at the AMA conference this year, yet, despite the fact that I’ve a habit of being über critical of it, I find myself with a tinge of jealousy. People gathered round chatting about arts marketing, the challenges they face, the solutions they have come up with, a melting pot of arts geeks with fabulous…