I saw the venue for the first time the morning before our debut show. I was led through a beautiful pub, down a staircase, through a utility room, into a tiny courtyard (where we would have been performing if it wasn't for British weather), through a dark dank room, through another dark dank room, and finally into our performance space! The darkest, dankest room of them all. It was a surprise. But, after the lights and table had been set up, and we'd purchased some bunting, I started to see that it might just work.
The first show went down with several hitches. One of the benches collapsed. Three audience members found themselves on the floor. One poor soul had to spend the rest of the day covered in cider. The remainder of the show was clouded by the doom of bench-related anxiety. Everybody was on edge. Some lines were almost certainly forgotten. And we had two reviewers in, watching the whole disaster unfold.
But, miraculously, the audience laughed loads of times (including at the Plato's cave reference - what a sophisticated crowd we draw in). All the way through. We can now stop describing the show as a series of events, and instead just call it a comedy. And our review from fringe guru was actually rather positive (4 stars!)
Sam Fox (puppeteer) experienced nerves for apparently the first time ("It's sort of like being scared, but not really, I'm all jittery, this is very confusing. And I'm hungry"). Tye Mcgivern drank several whiskies and reinforced all the benches. Naomi and Lori bought a baguette. I congratulated myself on my foresight when several months before I had flatly refused to be in the show (how do people do it? It's TERRIFYING)
Second show ran a lot more smoothly. A sizeable chunk of the script was missed out but nobody (including, for quite some time, the cast) noticed. The audience was lovely, and also laughing (surprisingly at completely different bits this time - our show is thus doubly funny) and when it was over we all got drunk and ended the night in an empty dark room dancing to Talking Heads.
The Sunday performance was, for me anyway, a nauseous affair (oh thanks wine, you bastard). I was on ticket-collection duty, and failing miserably, partly because the pub was packed (turns out they do a very popular Sunday lunch - book in advance if you fancy it). Also, I'd thought that only family and friends were coming but there were quite a few ordinary punters (incidentally my favourite kind of punter) as well. We sold our last few tickets in the pub and, after re-evaluating the seating situation in our dark, dank room, even had to turn some people away (sorry, do come back another day!)
So we've now done THREE performances, each with a good sized audience and lots of laughter. We're all quite surprised. I won't be down next weekend (in the midst of all this excitement, I forgot I'm supposed to be writing a PhD), but can't wait to see what changes have been made by our final weekend of the 19th/20th. EXCITING.
[Our capacity's down to 20 now (and our benches are up to 78% sturdiness) so do book ahead to avoid disappointment]
The first show went down with several hitches. One of the benches collapsed. Three audience members found themselves on the floor. One poor soul had to spend the rest of the day covered in cider. The remainder of the show was clouded by the doom of bench-related anxiety. Everybody was on edge. Some lines were almost certainly forgotten. And we had two reviewers in, watching the whole disaster unfold.
But, miraculously, the audience laughed loads of times (including at the Plato's cave reference - what a sophisticated crowd we draw in). All the way through. We can now stop describing the show as a series of events, and instead just call it a comedy. And our review from fringe guru was actually rather positive (4 stars!)
Sam Fox (puppeteer) experienced nerves for apparently the first time ("It's sort of like being scared, but not really, I'm all jittery, this is very confusing. And I'm hungry"). Tye Mcgivern drank several whiskies and reinforced all the benches. Naomi and Lori bought a baguette. I congratulated myself on my foresight when several months before I had flatly refused to be in the show (how do people do it? It's TERRIFYING)
Second show ran a lot more smoothly. A sizeable chunk of the script was missed out but nobody (including, for quite some time, the cast) noticed. The audience was lovely, and also laughing (surprisingly at completely different bits this time - our show is thus doubly funny) and when it was over we all got drunk and ended the night in an empty dark room dancing to Talking Heads.
The Sunday performance was, for me anyway, a nauseous affair (oh thanks wine, you bastard). I was on ticket-collection duty, and failing miserably, partly because the pub was packed (turns out they do a very popular Sunday lunch - book in advance if you fancy it). Also, I'd thought that only family and friends were coming but there were quite a few ordinary punters (incidentally my favourite kind of punter) as well. We sold our last few tickets in the pub and, after re-evaluating the seating situation in our dark, dank room, even had to turn some people away (sorry, do come back another day!)
So we've now done THREE performances, each with a good sized audience and lots of laughter. We're all quite surprised. I won't be down next weekend (in the midst of all this excitement, I forgot I'm supposed to be writing a PhD), but can't wait to see what changes have been made by our final weekend of the 19th/20th. EXCITING.
[Our capacity's down to 20 now (and our benches are up to 78% sturdiness) so do book ahead to avoid disappointment]
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