Soundtrack to My Downfall.
I’m still torn
over whether to put songs into my Edinburgh show or not.
I’ve been working through some bits and pieces today, which included singing a couple of the songs I’d potentially earmarked for inclusion, and I can’t quite settle on what would be best; the columns titled ‘for’ and ‘against’ are equally stacked. A good reason to use music is it would flesh out the show considerably and give it more weight and depth - and possibly a way to give the end of the show a natural lift - but my main concern is my more serious songs could slow down the comedy and affect the pace of it.
It’s a quandary. The sticking point is how far I want to delve into more emotional content; the material I’ve already written strays into territory I’ve not explored in stand-up before - and feels better for it - and while I’ve definitely got a few songs that could strengthen my point, I know how simplistic the approach to genre and brochure listing can be in Edinburgh; this was the problem Glyn and I had when we took our comedy play 'The Balloon Debate' to our first EdFringe back in 2008; I still think some of the content was genuinely funny, but the fact we were a double act appearing in a three-hander comic play listed in the comedy section but written by two of the three of us seemed to confuse reviewers particularly, more so than if we’d listed it as theatre and let it stand on its own two feet without any preconceptions; likewise, I remember watching a great stand-up show about a comic becoming a single parent after the sudden death of his wife, that was both funny and moving, yet was poorly received by the press because it was harder to pigeonhole than your more standard comic set.
The need to define a show is so Edinburgh-centric and ultimately unnecessary; surely, the only requirement is to be entertaining, and if you make people think as well as laugh, that doesn’t make it less of a comedy. This leads to a couple of salient points about the show I wrote in my ideas pad last week on my way back from therapy:
“It doesn’t have to be perfect. And a review can be as imperfect as a show is.”
I’ve been working through some bits and pieces today, which included singing a couple of the songs I’d potentially earmarked for inclusion, and I can’t quite settle on what would be best; the columns titled ‘for’ and ‘against’ are equally stacked. A good reason to use music is it would flesh out the show considerably and give it more weight and depth - and possibly a way to give the end of the show a natural lift - but my main concern is my more serious songs could slow down the comedy and affect the pace of it.
It’s a quandary. The sticking point is how far I want to delve into more emotional content; the material I’ve already written strays into territory I’ve not explored in stand-up before - and feels better for it - and while I’ve definitely got a few songs that could strengthen my point, I know how simplistic the approach to genre and brochure listing can be in Edinburgh; this was the problem Glyn and I had when we took our comedy play 'The Balloon Debate' to our first EdFringe back in 2008; I still think some of the content was genuinely funny, but the fact we were a double act appearing in a three-hander comic play listed in the comedy section but written by two of the three of us seemed to confuse reviewers particularly, more so than if we’d listed it as theatre and let it stand on its own two feet without any preconceptions; likewise, I remember watching a great stand-up show about a comic becoming a single parent after the sudden death of his wife, that was both funny and moving, yet was poorly received by the press because it was harder to pigeonhole than your more standard comic set.
The need to define a show is so Edinburgh-centric and ultimately unnecessary; surely, the only requirement is to be entertaining, and if you make people think as well as laugh, that doesn’t make it less of a comedy. This leads to a couple of salient points about the show I wrote in my ideas pad last week on my way back from therapy:
“It doesn’t have to be perfect. And a review can be as imperfect as a show is.”
