mostly david ephgrave

Today, I finally finished compiling my 2017/18 tax records (with my wife as my unpaid assistant), which makes for depressing reading unless you're a fan of minus figures. (If so, then get ready for  this : -4922.679232) (I know: phwoar) I find myself at a crossroads over what to do next. The past four years have been primarily about performing stand-up to fringe audiences to work up my solo chops, having always performed comedy as one half of a double-act up to that point. While I've taken shows to London, Brighton, Bath, Leicester, Hitchin and Letchworth over that time, there's no doubt Edinburgh was the biggest underlying factor, with the other dates being either a warm-up for or a cool-down from three consecutive Edinburgh Fringes, with me writing another solo show in 2015 that I didn't take to Scotland, but was still put together with going there alone as my motivation. There's no denying the experience has been challenging, both creatively and financial...

The nicest thing about tonight’s preview - aside from the fact it went ahead - was that some of my ex-students came to see it. I’d clocked their name on the booking list for the previous Actors’ Temple show, which we ended up having to pull, and wondered if it was them (their surname rivals mine for its unusualness) so I was particularly pleased they were able to make the rescheduled date; it’s lovely when someone goes to trouble of booking - let alone planning to travel into town specifically to see you - that you hate to be the reason it doesn't go ahead. They enjoyed the show, which was a compliment as they were always very funny themselves. They were the first to put their hand up for any improv game I set and they always made me laugh. Their class was full of talent, and the keenness they injected into proceedings made the job a lot of fun. The show was fairly good and was certainly very useful, even when putting tearful reunions to o...

I did quite bit of work on my show today, both in terms of running the material and orchestrating the admin that goes with it, but I'm finding it hard to make improvements - or to even know that's what they are - without a director to steer me through it. Sadly, it all goes down to personal judgement at the moment, as it’s next-to-impossible to get someone to commit to helping me out and - even if they were to - they’d have to be just the right person for the job. What I could really do with someone to tell me what’s already right as I’m naturally hypercritical, and I don’t want to replace stuff that works with stuff that doesn’t, if things evolve that way without the benefit of an outside eye to put a lid on it. I was surprised to find a fair amount already worked when I did my work-in-progress dates in Bath in April and Brighton in May; I don’t want to lose the essence of what I did there through over-thinking and over-editing it, but at the same time, I still w...

Much of my time seems to be taken up with the admin around my forthcoming work-in-progress dates and my recently confirmed return to Edinburgh this Summer, with little-to-no time spent on the actual content, which is something I'd like to fix soon. Tomorrow seems as good a time to start as any, as for once I’ve actually got the whole day free. Okay, there are other things I need to do too - I haven’t sent out press releases for my Leicester Comedy Festival show that takes place in a few weeks, which is leaving it pretty late - but at some point, I need to focus fully on writing, as I want to put something together I’m proud of to rival what I did last year, which had its faults, but was still a leap ahead on from my first show '...and Ephgrave'. A lot of it is psychology. I told myself a few weeks ago that I wanted to make sure I’d at least broken the back of my work-in-progress set in time for my Leicester show, so even though I won’t ...

What I could really do with at this stage of putting my Edinburgh show together is an editor. I have so many little bits and pieces and ideas flying around that I can scarcely keep track of them, let alone decide what’s best 'in' and what’s best 'out'. This is partly thanks to my blog, which has been a fantastic source to call on, as I wouldn’t remember half of the things that crossed my mind over the past few years if it weren’t for it, but it can also be an overwhelming record to get to grips with; it can be luck of the draw as to whether I’ve picked the right entries, or whether there are some far better ideas that have been lost, under the weight of it. Yesterday was a case in point: before I started a run, I noted down a couple of rough ‘new’ ideas – i.e. old blogs that I hadn’t yet looked at in a stand-up context that had popped into my mind – to have a quick look. In doing so, I stumbled across a piece I’d half-worked up for ...

I left the office today, feeling happy with how my show's shaping up.  I'm under no illusions that Thursday's work-in-progress set won't be rough around the edges. I'm also fully aware that the show I take to Brighton next week will be markedly different from what I take to Edinburgh...but that's okay. It's all part of the process. I'm looking forward to having a four-night run next week to play with the material and see what works, safe in the knowledge that I still have two months after Brighton to chop and change what I've got, to tailor it to Edinburgh. The results in the meantime should at least be entertaining, as they were when I performed ' Work in (Hope of) Progress' in Bath.  One positive upshot of putting together my set is I enjoy performing the material so much more than last year's show, even at this early stage. The content is a lot more playful than '...and Ephgrave' and takes in a greater variety of subjects. I...

Today (Sunday), I reached my secret self-enforced mental cut-off point for writing new material to go into next weekend’s Bath Comedy Festival ‘Work in (Hope of) Progress’ dates . I'm surprised by how much new non-projection based stuff I've accumulated, but I suppose it's no wonder when I think of how few gigs I've been able to use the technology at in recent months. That's not to say there won't be more of it to squeeze into my Brighton and Edinburgh show - there are more than a handful of routines I have in mind for it - though I'd sooner draw a line under what goes into the Bath setlist, than put in too much half-formed half-learnt stuff I won't yet be able to do justice. It’s reassuring though, as it gives me a firm sense of the direction my show will take in the next few months. My Bath ‘Work in (Hope of) Progress’ dates will be markedly different to Brighton and Edinburgh’s ‘Mostly David Ephgrave’ show, but no less free-sta...

I’ve been concerning myself with admin today for a couple of work-in-progress dates that I’m doing at the Bath Comedy Festival in April. As is always the case when you’re self-producing a show, getting the paperwork done is part-satisfying, part-frustrating; you can’t help but feel that the time spent filling in forms, choosing promo pictures and writing blurbs would be much better spent deciding what you’re actually going to say on stage when you're up there . This becomes a small, yet important background detail. I remember chatting to a well-established comic who was previewing one of his Edinburgh Fringe shows at Mostly Comedy a few years back, and remarking on my frustration with this admin / writing balance. He’d recently been taken on by one of the country’s biggest comedy producer / agencies, and told me how for the first time since he’d started out, he hadn't had to consider the organisational side of things once; everything was in...

I'm annoyed that I've sailed so close to the Leicester Festival deadline that I don't think I'll be doing it next year.  That's the downside to being in charge of all your own admin: things can easily slip through the net. Glyn and I nearly missed the deadline the last time we played Leicester two years ago too, but through knowing a promoter, we just managed to squeeze in. They no longer run a venue, so I was unable to pull the same trick this time around. "Dicks".  (I'm the dick, not them.) It's frustrating, as it was part of my game plan for working up a show for next year. If I don't get in, I'll have to substitute it for a few dates elsewhere, but it's great to have the cross-promotion of a festival to shift tickets; I am, after all, an extremely unpopular person. It's a shame, as I really enjoyed the festival both times we did it.  There's still a chance I might snap up a venue last-minute. Be it a shed, a ...