mostly david ephgrave

The last two days at the Fringe have been interesting. Monday’s show was the first of a two-day 2for1 deal on tickets, which contributed to creating possibly the biggest audience I’d had up to that point – who were eerily silent, compared to the lesser numbers I’d played to before. It felt a little ominous and unsettling, as there’d been a definite growth in response across the first four shows, which felt as if it had suddenly hit a standstill. This wasn’t necessarily strictly the case. It’s worth remembering it was midday on a Monday morning, which is not the best time to watch comedy, plus the 2for1 deal might draw in people who wouldn’t come otherwise, and weren’t into the style of it; on the flip-side, it may have been me, though my tech Fraser assured me it wasn’t (saying he didn’t think I could have done any more to make it work). As the show went on, all I had in my head was the fact I was about to do a gig immediately afterwards at...

Two shows have gone by since my last post (I didn’t write a blog yesterday, so there’ll be two winging the internet’s way today), which both felt markedly different. Saturday’s show had sixteen people in, which made the room feel pretty busy; it’s more than enough to work up a good show with. They were lovely; especially a rather stocky-looking guy at the front, who I for some reason assumed would hate me, though his reaction suggested I couldn’t have been more wrong; proof you should never judge a book by its cover, or a punter by his alpha-masculinity. Even though I was only a few days in, Saturday felt like a turning point. The show's starting to feel more cohesive and I’m starting to get a sense of the space. Just Out the Box at Just the Tonic is a great room for stand-up comedy of the sort that I stand up and ‘comede’; it’s lovely and intimate, without being intimidating for the performer or the audience. Be it by luck or judgement, the ve...