Category: comedy novice

Edinburgh Fringe Festival (16 years later)

I was scrolling through photographs earlier today and I came across this:

If I went through the archives there’s possibly a copy of it back at the time it was taken. Although there’s every chance the image has long been gobbled up by the domain transfers and the pixabucket or whatever it was I was using to host photos (it wasn’t flickr because for some reason that was blocked in the UAE at the time, along with skype).

It is taken outside the venue where I performed my show when I went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2009. My first solo show, had never even done more than a ten-minute spot before, and I went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with it.

WHAT WAS I THINKING.

Well, 2009 was the year after the year when a decade of experiences happened to me in the space of eighteen months and then we moved to Abu Dhabi. It’s no exaggeration to say that I was barely clinging on. So I guess I wasn’t thinking, eh?

In many ways, this show did my head in and when we left I was pretty convinced I’d never be performing again.

I had one reviewer who came, fell asleep, then gave it two and half stars, or maybe it was two stars and I’m just talking myself up 🤣. But mostly, it did my head in, because I left utterly and completely consumed by a belief that I didn’t belong in that world. I knew stand-up wasn’t for me. By then I’d been on enough line-ups and backstage with enough people who said they were nervous, who said they had no self-confidence and yet … out they went and looked like they knew exactly what they were doing. I had no theatre training so it didn’t occur to me that there was any kind of performance that would work for me.

At this stage the only person I’d seen who was doing what I could see myself doing was TJ Dawe. But he was a trained actor, and I was really wary of stepping into that world.

I still couldn’t see anyone doing the kind of performance that I wanted to do, which wasn’t standup and wasn’t acting. Edinburgh also made me think that the fringe circuit isn’t just brutal…it’s a blood sport. I just couldn’t see how someone who was quiet and wrote quiet shows could possibly find their way through it all.

Looking at that show now from the distance of sixteen years, I can, however, see that I was working my way towards the work I would be able to do. This show in Edinburgh was was on the way to where I wanted to be. A draft. A draft that probably shouldn’t have been shared publicly, but that’s what you get at an open access festival I guess. So this show is full of my early stand-up work, but is also clearly the foundation script for what would become An Evening With the Vegetarian Librarian.

It has taken me a long, long time to find my way through to the writing I want to write and the performing I want to perform. I mean, so many of my friends are talking about their plans for retirement (not immediately but coming up), where I’m thinking, ‘But I’ve only just worked out what I’m supposed to be doing!’

But Edinburgh wasn’t only about the performing and the show and what it taught me about being an artist. It was hard and it did my head in, but as part of my parenting life, this moment here is one of the absolute favourite times of my life. It was magic.

I wouldn’t be thinking at all, but there’s no footy on

I’m no longer completely petrified when I go on stage.

I’ve done it a good number of times now (I’m not sure exactly how many, though it is still a small enough number that I could probably count them if I needed to), so I know what the stage(s) feel like under my feet, I know what the mic feels and sounds like, I know where to stand, and I almost know where to look.

Raw helped of course, because it has allowed me to believe that getting up in front of people and promising to make them laugh is a valid thing for me to do.

It’s a bit chicken and egg, I suppose, but that confidence is allowing me to gain control of my performance (which in turn gives me more confidence and so it spirals on, or so I hope). I have a few solid jokes which I know will work – like Dr Phil says ‘the greatest predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour’ – plus, I’m starting to understand why they will work. I have learnt to take my breath at exactly the right time, I have changed the word that I – and therefore the audience – always stumbled on, I have found a better order of putting things in.

This also means that I know the potential flat spots in my script. I know the jokes (I think we call them gags, but like I’ve said before, I’m not too good with the language of it yet) which sometimes work and sometimes don’t. In some cases, I’ve even made a decision to leave in a joke even though I know it isn’t quite funny yet. That might be because I haven’t got enough material if I take out all the stuff that isn’t quite funny yet. It might be because I know it will be funny, but I have to work out how. Or it might be because I need it as the setup to a later joke. In any case, I am starting to understand how to get the audience back, and I’ve started to develop a stock of material I can use to do that.

I’m also surprisingly comfortable with the idea that not everyone is going to find a middle aged librarian funny (and not that I’m saying I’m middle aged or that is something to be concerned about, just that is how my character would be perceived – you know, in comparison, plus I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who wishes her bar tab included a nice cup of tea). This could become my ruminations on the ‘women aren’t funny, all they talk about is periods and kids’ debate, and one day I suppose I will write about that, but not right now. All I mean is that I don’t expect that everyone will find me funny. This is because not all comedians can be funny to all people. And that’s why the same universe has been able to give us both Woody Allen and Benny Hill. I think – thought my thoughts on this are still developing – that there are some people with a more universal comedic appeal. Dylan Moran, for example, or Ben Elton.

But now, as I write, I have started to think differently to what I thought I thought. See just up there where I wrote ‘I’m also surprising comfortable…’? Between there and here I have started to think differently…or at least to ask myself a different set of questions. Is being ‘surprisingly comfortable’ being rational, realistic and mature about me and my likely audience? Or is that just being complacent and not trying hard enough?

I’ll have to get back to you on that after all. But it won’t be until after we’ve been out to T-Chow for tea and I’ve watched Grey’s Anatomy.