mostly david ephgrave

I’ve only got two more performances of last year’s show to go - tonight in London and next month in Leicester - and while I’m still proud of it, I realised yesterday why it’s so hard to keep hold of that. When I first performed a skeleton version of it at Bath Comedy Festival last April, I was already happy with the reaction it got; for me, it was nice to be doing something fresh, plus I was fortunate enough that the audience enjoyed it at this early stage. The following month I took a slightly more polished version to the Brighton Fringe which also went down well, and this continued to build across the various previews in June and July and into the (allegedly) finished version to Edinburgh. The problem psychologically is the negative by-product you pick up along the way. In most cases, every show is the first time that audience has seen it, yet inevitably I’ve been to every one (it would be weird it I wasn’t); and while there’s nothing wrong with having to approach it afr...

Producing a show can feel like an experiment into how much stress one man can take. Yesterday, the shit hit the fan all at once, when I learnt the person who was meant to assisting me in Brighton this Thursday may no longer be available and realised the deadline for artwork for my advert in this year's Just the Tonic Edinburgh brochure was today, within minutes of each other; this, after a day that had already been overwhelmed with admin, with no time to rehearse even before the extra double-headed bombshell hit. While I try hard to keep on top of things without letting it escalate to high-pressure, it can be hard to keep on an even keel when I’m not feeling my best. This is greatly exacerbated when working alone. I like to think I'm good at solving problems when they come up, and that I’m not one to give in, but we all have our limit. I wouldn’t mind if I felt I’d spent enough time on my material or that I had sufficient positive reinforcement, but invariably, I ...