Tag: performance

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Poetry Connections and Train Connections

Although it happened too late to write up in this blog, I was at the Inn Deep bar in Glasgow last Tuesday for the launch of The SpecBook 2024. One of my poems had been published by – as the name suggests – Speculative Books.

Copies of the collection had been sent out to contributors, but as mine was lost in the post, I collected one there. What I didn’t realise is that there are actually two small volumes. It was great to see my name in print other than in poetry group pamphlets.

Part one of the schedule was devoted to the published readers, so the first section lasted for a long while. The audience were reminded to support rather than heckle, which is exactly what I would say.

Part two was given over to an open-mic, where anyone could read a poem, whether they were in the book or not. I even met someone I knew from my former open-mic, but I wasn’t able to stay long enough to hear her work.

That was because I’d never visited Inn Deep before and I’d booked my travel cautiously. I’d allowed plenty of time between connections, going from one coast of Scotland to the other. As it happens, this worked out so well that I was home an hour earlier than expected.

Performing to an Audience

Flight and Fright

This morning, I attended a talk by Professor Angus Wallace. His name might not be immediately recognisable, but you’re likely familiar with his story. In 1995, he treated a passenger with a collapsed lung using improvised surgical equipment on a flight from Hong Kong to London.

Judging by the number of slides skipped, he probably brought twice as much material as he needed for the hour-long slot. The mid-air incident formed only a part of his speech, with the rest devoted to his many inventions in shoulder surgery and his later career as an advisor in major air and rail accident investigations.

All this could be a terribly dry subject, but the professor knew his audience was from a non-medical background. Any medical terminology was kept to a minimum or explained in simpler terms, and the whole structure of the presentation kept the audience engaged.

I suspect his rhetoric skill was developed through necessity. One of his earliest inventions was a tool for ingrown toenails which reportedly worked well, but was not marketed properly, so few people knew of its existence. From that point, he was sure to amplify his ideas more forcefully.

Quite by coincidence, I’ve been thinking more about my longstanding desire to start a group dedicated to helping people to overcome stage fright. I can tell you there are writers out there with some top ideas that will never make it onto a stage because they have no motive, whereas Professor Wallace did it as part of his job.

Just yesterday, I received an email from a local organiser, who brought to my attention that I’d been mentioned in an interview between two mutual pals. I started to compose a two-sentence reply, which quickly turned into several paragraphs outlining how I’d like this proposed group to look.

I have some definite ideas, such as aiming it at members who aren’t yet ready for more formal organisations like Toastmasters International. But there are many details that need input or experimentation. This organiser probably opened my reply this morning and thought What is this wall of text all about?

By writing about this proposal in such a public forum as this blog, and by speaking to the right folks, I hope to make it a reality and to help more people face their fear of the stage.

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Cycling Around

On Thursday, realising I had a free evening, I took the opportunity to see some performance art. This was hosted by my pal Luke ‘Luca’ Cockayne, who was reading a series of autobiographical pieces over the span of 12 hours. I only had time to see around two hours.

I don’t want to focus on the performance itself, particularly because the aftermath is still on for the next five days. Rather, I want to look at something I did during that performance.

One of the organisers handed out pens and paper to the tiny audience with the intention that we could draw if we felt inspired. Much as Luca has tried to teach me some art, I’m still far more inclined to write by default.

I enjoy the challenge of improvising poetry on the spot, so my rough plan was to compose a rough version based on the performance I could see in front of me, and then extract a polished version from that. Yet after writing my so-called polished version, I felt it didn’t quite work, so I tried another.

I ultimately ended up with a total of seven poems. Put together, they form a cycle of sorts, each of which approaches what I want to say without being able to cut to the heart of the matter.

I feel there are diamonds to be dug out of the mess here, so I’m going to keep these drafts for the moment until I find some sort of home for them.

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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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Leaving Hotchpotch After Nine Years

Persons! I had a technical failure yesterday, the like of which I haven’t seen in a long time. This meant I couldn’t bring you a full entry.

I was at my weekly Tuesday writing group as usual. The Internet can be dodgy there, but it normally connects after a few tries and/or a reboot. This time, my laptop was having none of it, so I tapped out a short entry on the Jetpack app briefly explaining the situation.

However, it’s another literary group I want to talk about today. Long-term readers will know about Hotchpotch, which is a monthly open-mic primarily aimed at writers, where members can sign up for five-minute slots. I didn’t set up the group, but when I took over in 2015, it had already existed for five years.

One week ago, at the last meeting, I announced my intention to step down from running it after nine years and pass it on to Eilidh, who’s been assisting for well over a year. We’ve taken a couple of months to discuss how we would make the transition, and that process will continue into our next event in October.

The reason I chose this time is not because Hotchpotch is in a bad way. It’s arguably the most streamlined and consistent it’s ever been, and it’s precisely because it’s so strong that I feel able to step back from it in favour of new projects.

Indeed, that very Sunday, I took part in a one-off show as part of the Dundee Fringe, and in next week’s entry, I’ll cover how that went.

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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 Attraction of the One-Off Piece

I make a point of seeing at least one show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival every year. My first one was yesterday, titled The Greatest Literary Beef of the 21st Century, hosted by Ross McCleary and Stefan Mohamed.

While I’m only familiar with Stefan by association, I’ve known Ross for a couple of years now. He has a highly surreal sense of humour often centres around highlighting a concept and workshopping possible ways to make it funnier, with a lot of help from his online followers, many of whom were in the audience.

This show followed the surreal route. It took the form of the two poets exchanging paper letters to intentionally create a feud between them both. It benefitted from its brevity, with the show itself restricted to just one 40-minute performance rather than a multi-day run. There was also a donation bucket offered at the end, so the audience could choose how much to give, if at all.

I’ve always been particularly attracted to works that are a one-off rather than part of a series or serial. For instance, one of my favourite books is the standalone Wired Love by Ella Cheever Thayer, while I don’t think Spike Jonze is likely to direct a sequel to one of my favourite films, Being John Malkovich.

I’m going back to the Fringe over the coming days, so I hope to see more off-one bangers while I’m there.

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What You Can Do in Five Minutes

A few months ago, my co-host and I reluctantly reduced the length of slots at our Hotchpotch open-mic event to five minutes. This was a combination of the sheer popularity of the night and because we now need to finish our events by 9pm. We previously had seven-minute slots, which were themselves introduced after ten-minute slots became too long.

After a three-month trial, we’ve decided to keep the five-minute slots. However, if we can find a way to restore more time in the future, we’ll do it.

During those three months, and entirely by coincidence, a writer posted a message in a discussion group asking where fellow prose writers could be found. The previous evening, she’d been to another open-mic where every other participant had read out poetry.

Thinking back on Hotchpotch, we did once have more short story writers than poets. I can see a strong correlation between the time available and the type of work being heard at these events. Ten minutes is long enough to read 1,000 to 1,500 words, which is the typical lower bound of a commercial short story.

Shorter prose does exist – it’s called flash fiction – but that tends to be less commercial because there isn’t much space to develop a plot. By contrast, poetry tends to be concise by its nature and doesn’t necessarily need a plot.

I included the above points in my reply to this writer, and then I considered there might be a ‘market’ for prose-based events. Perhaps each reader could be given up to 15 minutes each or enough time for one story, whichever limit is reached first. The trade-off is that fewer readers could potentially appear.

I probably won’t be the one to run said event any time soon, but I’ll tuck away that idea for the future.

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Fringe Previews

Although a digital version is available, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe still diligently prints a paper catalogue of events. This year, it runs to a total of 384 pages, with six to 12 events per page.

Since the festival doesn’t take place until 2 to 26 August, there is still plenty of time to pick shows, so I’m working out which ones are showing when I’m available.

As I do this, I’m reminded that comedy – and especially stand-up – is the dominant form. It takes up almost a third of the catalogue, and you can find it from tiny attic venues to 1,000-seat theatres.

It strikes me there must be some crossover with certain productions. Comedy and spoken word have elements in common. And then the line between spoken word and theatre isn’t always clear, while the catalogue groups together physical theatre with dance and circus. And at what point do dance and circus become cabaret or variety?

Even experienced promoters must have to make tough decisions about which category where a given show should be placed. Should a humourous theatre piece go in Comedy and potentially be crowded out by other events, or be included in Theatre where readers may be expecting a more serious production?

In any case, the popularity of the festival might be starting to ease off. It’s notorious for causing performers to make a loss, largely because of accommodation costs. Even the well-known Jason Manford and Gail Porter say they’ve been priced out.

But that’s a matter for the future. For 2024, it’s business as usual, and I look forward to going once again.

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Raising a Toast

In last week’s entry, I made a passing reference to Toastmasters International. I’d known for a long time there was a branch near me, but I’d never managed to attend because it always coincided with something else.

I then discovered there would be a meeting the day after that entry was published, so I made a decision to try it out. Potential members are permitted to attend up to three events free of charge before deciding whether to join.

I was immediately impressed by several elements, from the encouraging posts on the Facebook page to the welcome from the hosts and other members at the hotel where they meet. I was glad to see the schedule running to the minute; for example, the first few items took place at 19:00, 19:02, 19:12, 19:14, and so forth. All timekeeping was enforced by a manually-operated traffic light system.

After the introductions, the event started with three speakers each giving a five-minute presentation on a given topic. The rest of the members would each fill in separate evaluation forms, giving the speaker feedback on what they liked and what could be improved. While those forms remained confidential between writer and receiver, one designated evaluator would later give public feedback.

The second half of the meeting took a more speed-dating approach, with members paired up at random and asked to question each other for four minutes apiece. This gave me an idea of what motivated people to join the organisation. One took it up after retirement, another was more focussed on the educational programmes – called Pathways – and a third wanted to encourage more girls into STEM subjects.

I’m told the speed-dating wasn’t a usual feature, and that the time would typically be given over to other members who wanted to be assessed on presentation style, including how often ‘Ah’, ‘Um’ and other filler words were used. I would have benefitted from this, as I find myself using these all the time.

So that’s already one good reason to join Toastmasters, and I wish I could say I signed up on the spot. The package they’re offering is right up my street; it mixes improv, lived experience and networking. Even the fee of £14 per month (plus a £20 joining fee) is good value. You could easily pay more than that for a typical night class at university.

The largest stumbling block is entirely practical. This branch meets twice a month, while my open-mic takes place on the same night as one of these. My attendance rate would be 50% at best, and I feel I can’t offer the commitment it deserves.

If my circumstances change in the future, I’d be willing to give Toastmasters fresh consideration.