Today, I nipped to Letchworth to meet with illustrator (and one-time - two-time - comedy
poet) Mushybees, to discuss an event Mostly Comedy will act as surrogate
parents to as part of Letchworth’s Arts Takeover in a couple of weeks.
Months ago he got
into contact to see if we’d be up for co-organising a comedy stage as part of
Letchworth’s weekend of arts-based attractions in July; something I’d
provisionally said yes to, before things got hectic in the lead-up to Edinburgh
and we didn’t take it any further. Despite not getting down to the nitty-gritty straight away, we managed to pull a line-up together in a back-and-forth of emails
yesterday, leading to me getting Glyn’s blessing and us deciding we’d officially
go ahead with it (whatever ‘officially’ means in this context).
In reality, it’s
not complicated: from 12pm until 6pm-ish on the 22nd
July, Glyn, Mushybees and I will host four Edinburgh previews from four acts
(including me), before Norman Lovett closes the event with an extended set, on an outside
stage in a marquee in the midst of the various stalls and demonstrations (in a Montell Jordan “This is How We Do It” stylie, as opposed to a “Down with the Poll Tax”
sense) that form the Arts Takeover event. Admittedly, Doggett & Ephgrave
have always been reticent about presenting comedy in an
outdoor environment, particularly in a setting where people are likely to
wander in and out without any sense of commitment to what they’re watching,
which is never conducive to comedy. At the least this should be an arty, more considered crowd, which should help things along,
plus the stage will be off the main drag, next
to an artisan micro-brewery, so it should feel more concentrated
than, say, a music festival. It’s also not being funded by us so we’re not
going to make a loss, which is always a bonus.
With Mushybees we’ve pulled together a nice line-up, with extended sets from
Norman, me, Thom Tuck, Daniel Cook and Hari Sriskantha, all hosted by D&E.
Pleasingly (if a little knackeringly) it takes place the day after our two-date
Hitchin Mostly Comedy run and the day before I share a bill with Daniel at The
Actors’ Temple, so all in all, a busy week. If nothing else, it will lead quite
nicely into Edinburgh for me, and offer the chance of an extra preview.
Yesterday was
also of note in that the last few seats for July's second Hitchin
show were snapped up, making it the first time the club has sold out a two-day run (totalling 300 tickets). What with that and Letchworth's mini-festival, it'll be a
nice way to see us into our summer break, with us having sold out six of our
eight 2017 dates so far; not bad going, eh? [RHETORICAL QUESTION].