mostly david ephgrave

When you regularly organise shows like I do, far too much of your time is taken up with logistics. Such was the case for me today, and primarily tonight. I have a preview in London tomorrow that I organised, booked and promoted myself at a venue I’ve worked at previously, which doesn’t have much of a tech set-up. Consequently, I’m taking most of the gear there myself. This wouldn’t have been a problem if I had someone coming with me to share the load, but sadly, a couple of people who’d originally been hoping to do this had to pull out unavoidably. As a result, I spent most of this evening with my brain zoned out, as I tried to figure out a feasible way of carrying everything I need on my own in one go; if only I possessed a pit pony. Part of the reason for my brain freeze was due to spending a long day split between rehearsing, organising, promoting, procrastinating…and other words that end with ‘ing’. It can be hard to multi-task with such little...

I enjoyed my first Brighton show tonight.  I arrived in town at around four-ish, with my (unpaid) assistant Stephen in tow, and made my way to the venue, laden down, as ever, with a mass of equipment. Rather fortuitously, my show is the first on every day, which is great, as it allows more time to wrestle with the - as usual - erratic technical set-up.  Minutes into the get-in , the comic who's assisting with the running of the space arrived to say the audio desk had blown out a week ago and has yet to be replaced; not the words you want to hear when your show is heavily technically reliant. She was the first to admit that she wasn't hugely tech-savvy, but between us - and with my reasonable sound knowledge (and experience of having to make gear function in a variety of bodged situations) - we managed to get the bare minimum to work. The only setback was the feed from my Mac would every so often emit a horrific foghorn-like sound that vibrated through the whole building, tha...