Tag: nonsense

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The Fringe, But Not That Fringe

A few weeks ago, I announced a show called the Virtual Nonsense Tour of Dundee. The premise was to present an audience with ten stories about the city and ask them to guess whether they were true or false, in the style of a pub quiz.

Just over a week ago, it finally happened. My co-host and I adopted the alter-egos Magdalen Green and Albert Street – named after real locations – and took the risk. It helped that most of the audience knew one or both of us, which helped the banter to flow.

We’d built in a lot of slack to allow for chat, delays and/or technical hiccups. It ended up being too much time and we finished early. Most shows run over, so it was a refreshing change in that sense. Of course, we weren’t the only act in town – far from it.

For the last four years, Sweet Venues has run the Dundee Fringe. It’s run on the same principle as its much larger and more famous Edinburgh counterpart, in that they provide space for acts rather than running shows or dictating the content. The scale, however, is very different. Approximately 70 acts were booked, which was huge for our single venue but dwarfed by the 3,700 acts who pack out the capital every August.

I made a point of going to other shows, with highlights including the student burlesque company Marvelesque taking their show off campus for the first time, Buckets of Blood featuring Grimm fairy tales told as they were originally written, and Tango the Pain-Proof Man who performed stunts such as chewing glass and lying on a bed of nails.

I can only speak for the shows I attended, but while crowds were small, they were loyal, and I’d often meet the same people at the box office. I hope there is a 2025 edition and that the enthusiasm continues, especially as I’ve now had time to reflect on our virtual tour and understand what to do differently next time.

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Taking a Show on the Virtual Road

For the last couple of months, I’ve been working on a pet project. Now the proposal has been accepted and advertised, I’m finally at liberty to tell the public.

Since 2021, Sweet Venues has organised the Dundee Fringe. Like its Edinburgh counterpart, the organisers don’t run the shows themselves, but provide the venue and invite performers to apply for slots. In previous years, I’ve run a game show, but this time around, it was time for something different.

In fact, I already had a solid idea with pal who shares a similar sense of humour. One of our recurring jokes was to talk about organising a tour of Dundee but telling tourists absolute nonsense about the city instead of facts.

I half-seriously wondered whether we could actually make this happen, even as a one-off event. Then when Sweet Venues put out the call for performers, the final piece of the puzzle fell into place. We didn’t need to take anyone around the city; using just a projector, the city could come to them.

Just before I made the application, I started by pulling together a presentation, making sure my pal was willing to co-host. We held our first rehearsal at the weekend, ironing out a few flaws in the script and making sure the technical side worked without fail.

If you’re in or around Dundee, you’ll be able to see The Virtual Nonsense Tour of Dundee on Sunday 15 September.

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The Joy of Nonsense

Last week, I said I was organising three live events over the next month and that there would be more about those in this entry. On reflection, I think this is better done as a reactive post, as I can then talk about two of the final performances. So that will definitely appear next week.

A couple of weeks ago, I was in a pub in Stockton-on-Tees called the Thomas Sheraton. Behind the bar was a coffee machine with the label ‘Biscuits don’t live here’.

For some reason, I found this particularly amusing. By the time my meal was served, I’d written a good chunk of a piece that’s now sitting at around 350 words. It’s a surreal narrative about anthropomorphised biscuits are who are fed up with people and are leaving town.

Normally when I look back on work, I’m inclined to remove words from it. In this case, however, I’ve added words almost every time.

But where is the line between a nonsense piece and one that’s simply rubbish? Here’s my view on the matter.

The Bob Dylan track Subterranean Homesick Blues is a disjointed sequence of phrases and imagery. It’s lauded as summing up the counterculture movement of the day. However, even taking into account that many of the references are now outdated, I simply don’t find the lyrics cohesive enough to enjoy them.

By contrast, I thoroughly enjoy the Simon Armitage poem Thank You for Waiting, which is structured as an airport boarding announcement, but the categories of passengers he describes become increasingly more bizarre. Taken together, all the lines poke fun at the class system.

So for me, even a loose cohesiveness or some form of internal logic makes all the difference between the nonsense I enjoy and the nonsense I don’t. Remember this is only my definition, and it’s not wrong to like what everyone else hates, or vice versa.