Tag: stage

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Reaching Fever Peach

On Saturday just gone, I was given the opportunity to perform a 15-minutes of poetry at the Keiller Centre in Dundee. This was organised by local comedy band Fever Peach as part of their Monthly Indulgence event and here’s how they announced the event.

That said, I only learned of the opportunity on Wednesday and I didn’t have a themed set ready to go. After looking through my collection, the structure came together quickly, with the verse generally moving from more serious to more frivolous.

The actual reading time clocked in around 12 minutes. This was helpful as I knew there would need to be time left for applause and possibly banter with the hosts and the audience; I even gave out Biscoff biscuits as part of the performance.

And there was one other factor at play. When I go to events, I often like to write verse in situ. On one occasion, I wrote clerihews for all the performers who had gone before me. On another, I offered a poetic critique of all the art on the wall of the café. This time, I scribbled a short poem during the soundcheck, based on the, ‘One-two, one-two,’ that sound engineers often use to test microphones.

While the Fever Peach duo kept the show together, the other act on the bill was a travelling Mexican musician called Ed Stone. Despite breaking two different strings on two guitars, he acted as a melodic counterpoint to my poetry.

These shows always end with a complicated improv game, during which my mind went blank more than once, and Ed struggled a little because he was playing in a second language. Still, it was all a bit of fun.

The only downside was the size of the audience, with just five tickets sold. While it is true that the venue is quite hidden away, they always go down a storm and they deserve more eyeballs.

I would happily perform for Fever Peach again, and I look forward to similar opportunities in the future.

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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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Towards More Enthusiastic Speeches

With the possible exception of slam poetry, it’s usually acceptable to read from notes at literary events, whether you’re performing or introducing others. It makes a difference, however, whether you’re simply reading the words off the page or adding the meaning behind them.

I’ve been to a few events – literary and otherwise – where the host has stepped on stage, pulled out a piece of paper, then said, ‘We are very excited to welcome…,’ in a flat tone.

I thought about this last week as I heard a speaker at a protest last week who had notes on his phone. However, he only used the device as an aide memoir, as his speech was flawless. If I hadn’t been watching him, I would have thought it was done from memory.

As I say this, I know public speaking is not an easy skill to learn. Because I do so much of it, I sometimes forget some people have stage fright, even household names with long careers. I’ve long wanted to start a class to help people overcome this, and the idea has recently been bubbling up again.

I don’t currently know where these classes would be held, or even what they would be called, but I do know they would meet the following parameters:

  • One-to-one tuition, in contrast to Toastmasters International who hold group sessions.
  • In person, where possible.
  • Charged by the hour.
  • Aimed at a specific goal: business presentation, wedding speech, &c.

Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with my three top tips for giving speeches and presentations:

  • Look beyond the back row of seats, which avoids eye contact and helps keep your posture straight.
  • Avoid alcohol beforehand so you’re fully focussed on the moment.
  • Learn your words thoroughly so they sound natural when you present them.
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Some Direction

At an event yesternight, I had a conversation with a local author. While we’re not terribly well acquainted, we do follow each other online.

I mentioned I’d written a monologue as part of a Masters degree some years ago. Back in August, you might remember I saw the play Almost Adult at the Edinburgh Fringe, which prompted me to start redrafting it. The conversation did start me thinking about where I might go from here.

For instance, because the play is written from the point of view of a woman looking back around 15 years to her student days, we would need an actress of the right age. She also suggested reaching out to ‘an up-and-coming’ female director who could ensure some of the details were spot-on.

We also discussed the issue of copycat works. I wrote my monologue before Phoebe Waller-Bridge scored a massive hit with Fleabag, but there are some similarities. While it might be seen as derivative, success with one type of story often encourages publishers to snap up other works in the same genre.

In any case, it’s all academic for the moment, as I’m still not finished my latest redraft.

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Rewriting the Handbook

As mentioned in the last entry, our open-mic night for writers – Hotchpotch – held its first event in four months.

The bottom line is that the evening went well: we attracted a sizeable crowd, the event ran on schedule, and people embraced the new donations system. While there were a lot of variables outside our control, it helped to have a robust plan to remove as much guesswork as possible.

When I brought an assistant on board earlier this year, I composed a document to show her the structure of our events, as I’d previously done it from memory.

This is not an exhaustive textbook, but rather a handbook to give an overview of how the event is run, plus best practice gained from years of experience. For example, it reminds the host to recap the introductory speech after the first break for the benefit of those who arrive later.

Because our format evolved on the pub circuit, where we could finish later in the evening. I rewrote the handbook to include a stricter end time and added in revised best practice advice.

As the handbook is a living document, it will likely be updated every month or two with new tweaks, but it really did help with our event last week.

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Pen at Work

Two weeks ago, I spoke about seeing a one-woman monologue at the Edinburgh Fringe. It particularly appealed to me because I’d previously written my own play with a similar theme and presentation.

With the festivals now over for another year, my attention has turned to giving my own work its first major rewrite for some time, including a new snappier title.

In particular, the main character has always been an English literature student who keeps a video diary I changed the subject to a music and video production course, giving her more reason to use a camcorder. I’ve also restructured the narrative to include self-interruptions where she looks back at her student days from 15 years in the future.

If I really give the piece my attention, it should be roughly redrafted by next week, and then I need to start reshaping it neatly into its new form.

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Adapting a Sitcom For the Stage

Last week, I visited London with a pal. Among other attractions, we stopped at a West End show, namely a musical version of the sitcom Only Fools and Horses.

Both of us enjoyed the performance, yet it started me wondering about the pressures of adapting a much-loved show without disappointing the audience. A good start is to find writers with a track record of hits, and this show had two of them.

One of these is Jim Sullivan, who penned the spin-off show The Green Green Grass and is the son of the original Only Fools and Horses writer John Sullivan. Completing the duo is Paul Whitehouse, bringing his extensive background in character-led sketch comedy.

The resulting show is one that borrows major plot points from the TV series without ever feeling like a rip-off. The mix of music was interesting as well. It included many original songs, but the writers also chose to sprinkle in pre-existing tracks from other artists like Chas & Dave and Bill Withers. The opening and closing themes also featured prominently.

While it’s nothing to do with the writing, the accents of the actors were spot-on, helping to draw the audience into this world immediately.

In short, these two writers have pulled off an incredible feat of taking a TV sitcom and presenting it on a stage without losing any of its charm. I can’t find any other Whitehouse & Sullivan collaborations, but I look forward to seeing what they produce in the future.