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A Conversation With… in Leicester

a silly picture of me at Performance in the Pub.
A picture of me at Performance in the Pub. Thanks to David Wilson Clark for the image. No thanks to me for pulling silly faces.

So I’m still looking out for opportunities to put the current early work in progress version of A Conversation With My Father in front of audiences, to get a feel for it, and also for, y’know, actually properly performing myself, which is something I haven’t done before now. I’m looking to spend a week on it somewhere with some imaginary money and brilliant director/devisor post-PhD to get something full length and tourable, but for now, I’m grabbing at every opportunity to keep trying it out. So am delighted to find it selected for the brilliant Hatch’s Scratch (scratch means work in progress) all-day event at Embrace Arts in Leicester on the 17th of June. Which is also, slightly aptly, father’s day. Come see it with your fathers! My father might even be there! You should totally come. There will be two performances with limited audiences (12-15) which you sign up for on the day. Will be really nice to perform some of my own work in Leicester. Plus the tickets are totally free.

Also, it’s also worth mentioning, that there is by coincidence an amazing East Midlands performance line-up over the Thursday-Sunday, which if you’re anywhere nearby you should definitely try and get to. On the Thursday 14th there’s my Performance in Pub event 4 (obviously); featuring poems, stories, and a stage version of the Fringe First Award winning ‘Oh Fuck Moment’ from Chris Thorpe and Hannah Jane Walker. Then on the Friday there’s a brilliant double bill from Hatch over in Nottingham featuring Frank Abbott & Mamoru Iriguchi, then on the Saturday at DMU in Leicester there’s the Circuit showcase of new East Midlands work (the programming is much better than the website, please don’t be put off by the website), and then the Hatch: Scratch event on the Sunday! You can get your FREE tickets for that over here. Ace times, East Midlands, ace times.

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A Conversation With… post-Sampled

So here’s some of the reviews and tweets from this weekend’s premier of the current version of A Conversation With My Father. Sampled was ace, and I was performing amongst some pretty humblingly awesome company; I particularly loved see Laura Mugridge and Tom Adam’s Watery Journey… after it’s Performance in the Pub work in progress sharing, and also loved Molly Naylor’s My Robot Heart with music from the Middle Ones (totally in mind for a future PitP), Andy Field’s fizzling writing about the city in Zilla!, and Chris Thorpe doing his astonishing and gripping thing with There Has Possibly Been an Incident. Gutted to miss Melanie Wilson, Curious Directive, and Ross Sutherland due to having to do my own show. But on that – I was incredibly pleasantly surprised, and learnt a lot. Ridiculously low on time right now (hence no linking up the above, you can google, right?), but here’s some of the stuff I learnt/found interesting about performing ACW:

  • goodness me audiences are different
  • either that or I need to get more consistent in performance
  • apparently I can remember words, which is good.
  • sometimes the sort-of-funny things I write turn out to be VERY funny, and I need to structure the performance to balance that
  • This is an important story, that appears to be reasonably approachable
  • It makes people cry.
  • I don’t like making people cry. I want to find a way of (metaphorically) telling people ‘it’ll all be ok’ afterwards, but don’t think it will unless I also make people want to Do Something
  • I don’t think it’s up to me to tell people what that Something is.
  • people are really interested in all of the stuff I pack for a protest, and want it explaining. No one ever works out that the number for GBC LEGAL that I write on my arm (with the label) is for a lawyer, and why you do that.
  • I think there’s something in comparing the ritual of readying for protest for both protestor and police office
  • the sound recording I have of me and my dad is not very good at higher volumes. This is rubbish and I need to get someone who knows more than me to fix it.
  • I think I’ve found a ‘TED’ version of this story – performance lecture, but would like to explore how it possibly becomes more performance, or maybe more story.

As for the future of it, I’m hoping to get a producer or director on board somehow, and spend a week on it in a rehearsal room somewhen and somehow to work it up into a 50-60 minute solo show. And I might even have some photos to show you soon.

In the meantime I’ll leave you with some some self-congratulatory highlighting of positive reviews/tweets:

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