On genre (a beginning – believe me, there’s more to come on this topic)

Learning lots. So, so much. And answering a great number of the questions that I hoped doing my first solo show would help me answer.

But I’m wondering, still wondering, which section of the fringe I should be registering myself in. When I first registered, I spent a lot of time tossing up whether or not to put myself in comedy or theatre. I steered away from theatre in the end, because I’m not an actor and I don’t have a director. But then, in festivals at least, ‘comedy’ feels so closely aligned to the gag-punch style of comedy that I’m not sure I really fit in there either. Obviously, I want there to be laughs, but I don’t necessarily want it to be stand-up, and I’m not sketch or character comedy mostly because again with the ‘not an actor’.

For the Adelaide Fringe, I was thinking maybe I could put myself in the ‘writing’ category, but does that imply something more literary? Poetry slams and spoken word and so on.

And not that I think I’m some sort of genre-defying genius. Flicking through the Fringe guide here, I see plenty of other shows and performers that are more theatre than they are comedy, more music than they are theatre and so on.

Maybe the guide needs sub-categories. Which leads me to wonder: do other people worry over this stuff or is it just because I’m a librarian?