So I've performed my new show five times now. And I'm performing it again tomorrow in Paignton, to an invited audience at a secret location. I'm starting to get to know it now, because these sorts of things only seem to come alive once they've been seen by an audience.
In a sense, I only really discovered what the show was about once audiences had seen it. It's far darker than I thought, with themes touching on fame, ambition, truth, disappointment, even mental health.
There are poems which always seem to get good reactions from the audience. Two of these, 'Who Wants Fame?', and 'Fabaranza', are real fast-paced silly poems. 'Zach' always seems to go down well, too. As does 'You Should Write A Poem About That'. In the latter poem, I decided to employ a puppet so that it appeared that I was having an actual conversation with someone, and I think this part of the show really works.
The first place I performed the show was at the St. Anne's Centre in Barnstaple, a wonderful ex-chapel with very creaky floorboards and Gothic architecture. It's so old that the new extension on the side was built during Tudor times! I performed the show four times here and had some lovely audiences. Last week I performed the show in Guildford, upstairs at The Keep pub, to another lovely audience. I made a slight change for this gig, adding a poem at the start of the show, 'Coffee Shop', which I'd written in an attempt to emulate the style of Dame Edith Sitwell.
On the way home from Guildford, I pondered on the script and how there are several moments where it seems that the tension needs popping. To relax I listened to one of my favourite comedians, John Mulaney, but instead of relaxing, I listened to how he would do this during his own monologues. I've since added three 'tags', as the Americans call them, moments where I comment on what I've just said, hopefully for some audience reaction. I'll be using these 'tags' during the Paignton performance this week.
The thing about a new show is that one is always comparing it with the show that came before. The previous show, 'Yay!', accompanied the Burning Eye book of the same name, and I performed it over two years. I'd also written and rehearsed the show during lockdown, so I knew the thing inside out. But there was always the sense that the scope of the show was limited because it had to use poems from the book.
With 'Bouncer', the sky was the limit, and while I was free to choose the subject matter, I then had to write bespoke poems to fit in. So it felt with 'Bouncer' that the poems were not as well established as those in 'Yay!', particularly because the poems in 'Yay!', had been written over a period of five years, not a few weeks! Consequently, I rehearsed much, much more because I wasn't sure myself whether they should have been in the show at all.
But I'm now much more relaxed about the show. I know it inside out, more than I probably ever did with 'Yay!', and because of this I can have fun with my voice and delivery and movement and all of the other things that a performance poet has to think about, rather than just trying to remember what comes next.
So, basically, I'm very happy with how the show is going. The next stop is the Edinburgh Fringe in August, and who knows what that will bring?
Below is a list of the poems in the show, as well as a video of 'You Should Write a Poem About That'.
Coffee Shop
Zach
You Should Write a Poem About That
Who Wants Fame?
Beard Envy
London is Mine for the Taking
The Contestants Await
Fabaranza
Your City Never Seemed So Cruel
Woodlouse Boy
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