The Interesting Times

So: it's a week in to the Adelaide Fringe run of A Record or an OBE. And it's been a bit weird.

For one thing, the audience reaction has been completely different. In Melbourne, the audiences laughed a lot; only a couple latched on to the drama and ignored (or failed to notice) the jokes. Here, our first two audiences were virtually silent. Sadly, this is when the Advertiser came, and it's painfully obvious from the two-star review that our reviewer didn't get any of the humour. Our numbers fluctuated but we managed half houses on average, which isn't bad. But without the little push from a good review - or any comments at all on Fringe forum talkfringe, despite our second night being full of people who got free tickets from the site - numbers are seriously low for next week.

It's not all bad news: the only non-Murdoch paper in town, the Independent Weekly, gave us a lovely review which was printed on Saturday; that, along with putting the show on the 2 for 1 tickets list, got us very good houses considering it was the Womadelaide weekend. I've been playing with The Crew, both in our "Short Order Impro" show (which has been getting steadily bigger crowds), and our team in the local impro competition "Clash of the Theatre Titans", which are both great opportunities to plug the show to large, happy crowds. (We won all three of the competitions, by the way; I got to play a "Thank God You're Here" style scene tonight as our prize, and it was great fun!) Plus The Fix has been looking for editorial content, and will publish a "Top Ten Goodies Moments" article I penned early this week, which is more good publicity.

This city is weird, though. The people are largely lovely and very kind, but the city itself has multiple personality disorder. It's been beautiful: the Northern Lights exhibition, part of the International Arts Festival, is an awe-inspiring installation of art projected onto public buildings. (One of my favourites was the fossils, mostly trilobites and fish, projected onto the Museum - though that's also a reminder that I'll be leaving just before palaeontology week!)

On the flip side, the city's also trying to kill me. It has been stupidly hot every day this week, with the Mercury staying consistently above body temperature. The clear skies explain the heat during the day, but I'm still weirded out by how hot is stays at night. (Our venue The Fridge is very ironically named: it's not the actual fridge, but what seems to have been a loading bay. Unlike the rest of the factory floor there's no insulation or ducting in the roof; it's just a brick box with a tin roof. We've abandoned the jumper and jacket and we're doing the show in rolled up shirt sleeves.) It's also a long way between places, and I've discovered my shoes aren't quite the right size for hours of walking in hot weather...

I have seen some great shows, though. Mostly comedy, stuff I've missed previously or won't get to see in Melbourne, but today I saw Under Milk Wood performed by Guy Masterson with my friend Janine, and it was wonderful.

One week to go!

I know I more or less promised a part two to the last installment, but I've been busy. I will commit that story to screen, though, and soon. But the reason I'm here is more pragmatic.

I've finally got a YouTube video up of one of my shows; it's a 51 second clip from my play, A Record or an OBE, and I think it's a good funny moment that showcases the show well (even if the video quality isn't amazing). I've embedded it below; if you like it, please stick it on your own LJ, your blog, web sites, wherever. There are two seasons of the show coming up, in Adelaide and Melbourne, and the more publicity the better!

More news soon. Promise.

Just a quick note this time - there are three shows left for A Record or an OBE. I don't have many bookings, so there are plenty of tickets left on the door; I'd love it if you came down to check it out. 80 Smith Street, near the corner of Gertrude, 6pm. $10/$5.

See you the other side of Fringe, probably...

Stuff is happening!

I have moved into my new house. Once the furniture is arranged correctly and the shed of doom (which might contain something the Antique Roadshow would be interested in, and possibly has within its bowels a piece of the one true cross) is emptied to make way for a bit of surplus stuff, it will become the comedy geek bachelor pad of the ages. Yes, I'm living with two of my best geeky comedian mates, and it's working out splendidly.

I also have a show coming in the Melbourne Fringe, and several other projects on the go, though sadly both TheatreGames Live and Planet Nerd have finished. Hopefully Planet Nerd will return next year, but we'll see. I've just recorded a demo of a short musical (not my own work) about Walter "Icepick" Freeman, notorious lobotomist; that will be performed in even more truncated form in the 10-minute play festival Short & Sweet in December.

That, though, is after my current major project, the first under the banner of Shaolin Punk, which I always intended to be the name of my theatre company when I got around to making some theatre. Well, here I am, and my first project is A Record or an OBE, a "what if it all went horribly wrong" story set in 1975, in which Graeme Garden and Tim Brooke-Taylor have to cope with Bill Oddie having given them the arse to become a rock star.

Guess which of the remaining duo I'll be playing?

I do have another comedy gig coming up, a fund raiser for the RMIT Fine Arts photographic exhibition. It's called Punraiser and it's on September 19 at Roxanne Parlour in the city. Should be a great night out, the line up includes some of my favourite comics.

Science-ology is coming to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival! Yes, that's right, it's me, in my first Comedy Festival. I can't believe I haven't done it before either, but there you are. Tickets are now on sale, and you can find out more about the show at these fine sites:

• The Comedy Festival listing for Science-ology


• The Comedy @ Trades listing for Science-ology; this is where you can book tickets!


• And of course, the Science-ology page at the Man in the Lab Coat web site.

I would naturally love it if you would pass on these details to anyone you think would enjoy the show. During the Festival, you can also catch me with the Crew in Triple Trouble, Instant Order: Trial By Audience and Impro Sundae (at the Comedy Festival time of 8:30pm); to find out when, you can check out the Crew's lineups page.

According to Virgin Blue's web site, the Adelaide Fringe is the second biggest fringe festival in the world. I'm guess Edinburgh gets the gold. Scary. But it also has good things to say about Adelaide Zoo, so I'll be going there. Public Transport in Adelaide seems pretty good, comparable to Melbourne in terms of price at least; they seem to be keen for people to use it, too. They even have trams there. (I think my internal benchmark for civilisation in a city involves trams in some form or another. Yeah, I know. I know.)

The owner of our house is thinking of selling; we've been asked our intentions past the lease. Let's hope he either decides not to sell, or sells to someone who wants to keep renting it, though the chances of the rent not going up by a lot if that happens are probably slim. I was hoping not to move again inside a year, and I really like this place, not to mention living with Darren and Emma...I'll keep my fingers crossed.

While I wait for the dust to settle in the aftermath of Melbourne Fringe 2005, I've not been able to rest; the registration deadline for the Adelaide Fringe is tomorrow, so I've been budgeting, planning, phoning, emailing, wheeling and dealing and working shit out. Adelaide will mark an important milestone for me, since it'll be the first time I've taken any show - let alone my own - on the road, and as we all know, the road is a B-I-itch, my friend. But if I can't make it to Adelaide, then what hope do I have for my dream of doing the great Westward festival tour in Canada next year?

Adelaide is tough for all sorts of reasons; for starters, it's more like the MICF than the Melbourne Fringe, in terms of its scale, audience enthusiasm, number of international acts and, of course, cost. Melbourne Fringe's registration fees are ever increasing, but Adelaide is already equal to the Comedy Festival last year. Then, of course, there's the potential folly of doing a show about evolution in the City of Churches... I'm going to have to work hard for my audience, and factoring in all the extra costs of a season away from home - travel, accommodation, technician and equipment hire - it was looking all but impossible, particularly because I couldn't find a venue that charged less than double what I'm used to paying over here.

Normally of course if your costs go up then so must your ticket prices, but I think there's a ceiling on what Joe Public is willing to pay for an hour's lecture about Darwin and natural selection, so I was despairing of bringing those costs down...until today, when I found the perfect place. The venue sounds like a corker - they're an existing bar who are taking over another, and are keen to get people into their new space - and my budget is a whole lot happier. Once this is all sorted, it's back to job searching and rewriting the show to make it the best it can be, using what I learned on the first run. Oh, and there's next Friday to think about:

The 3rd Annual King Kahuna Ginormous Acoustic Guitar Festival
Friday, October 22nd at 8pm, at Gertrude's on Gertrude Street Fitzroy.
Monique Brumby, Liz Stringer, Rob Longstaff, Chris Matthews and the Melbourne Guitar Quartet, all in one venue, for one night, hosted by yours truly, for just $10 at the door. Rock up, drink up, shut up and listen to some of the sweetest tunes around, plus win fabulous prizes (most likely King Kahuna bean bags).

The road is fucking hard; the road is fucking tough. There's no question that it don't take no guff...

What an awesome night. I'm slightly drunk, so to prevent rambling, the awesomeness comes in point form.

Audience of 9 for first night (5 pre-booked paying, 4 comps; venue maximum is 30). All laughed a lot and seemed to really enjoy it, which bodes well. All this time what was missing from the show was only an audience! Frankly I'm incredibly happy about it.

Dinner at Viet Rose. Great food there, not too expensive.

Fringe Festival Hub opening night party. Great entertainment, great DJ, great people. Drank a little, danced a lot, had an awesome awesome time and just got home 5 minutes ago.

I can sleep in tomorrow. Hurrah!

There's a Shakespeare meme going around where you're supposed to quote Shakespeare if you see someone else do it. No-one's doing sonnets, which is a shame, so here's some of my favourite one, though it's from memory and I could never quite get it right:

As an unperfect actor on the stage
Who with his fear is put besides his part
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage
Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart
So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
The perfect ceremony of love's rite
And in my own love's strength seem to decay
O'ercharged with burden of my love's own might.

Oh, and in case you didn't notice, I'm only doing 8 performances, so if you're going to come for smeg's sake don't wait until the last week when it'll sell out because everyone who didn't come early tries to make it. Or at least book early for the last week so everyone else will have to come earlier. And if you do come, please check out the other shows on at Glitch, because they seem pretty good (though I've only seen Mr. Al & Mr. Nick, which is, for the record, aaaaaaaaaaawesome).