mostly david ephgrave

I'm pleased with how tonight's Comedy Project gig went.  I've mentioned before how I find Soho Theatre Upstairs a difficult venue to play. It's not a comfortable room for comedy. It's hard to maintain attention. Glyn and I have tried everything there from on-book to off-book sitcom readings, stand-up shows, sketch shows and comedy plays. It's never been easy. The only way to keep the audience focused on you is to let off a flare every few minutes - and even then they'd only do it out of fear. The piece which was the best received was Doggett & Ephgrave's Comedy Shorts, which was half an hour's worth of filmed sketches. It's far easier to home in on specific detail on film. The Balloon Debate went well too, despite us being trapped in a 5' square wicker basket for the duration.‎ This morning, I told myself to push all these perceived challenges out of my head and to try to not to over-think it. I'd use it as a chance to tell so...

I’ve spent the last few hours running the material I plan to do at Monday week’s SohoTheatre Comedy Project gig , plus working on a couple of new bits I might try out at Thursday’s Hitchin Mostly Comedy . I’m pleased with how it's coming together on the whole. I’m making a point of running the stuff for the Soho show at least once a day, to get comfortable with it. If I can make the meat of the material second nature, I’ll be more relaxed on the day. It’s still very new. While there are a few weak links between set pieces, it’s beginning to feel cohesive. I’m looking forward to trying it in front of an audience. More than anything, I’m looking forward to the Actors’ Temple Work in(Hope of) Progress gig at the end of the same week, as it’s likely to be a more relaxed and receptive environment. My approach can be looser. I can risk doing unfinished stuff, to see how it lands. Once the Soho show has past I can switch my attention to writing more for Brighton. While I’m ...

I’ve been at Doggett & Ephgrave HQ today, stitching together material for Saturday’swork-in-progress gig . The biggest challenge at the moment is to make it feel cohesive. Parts of it sit together nicely; others feel pretty cut-and-shut. If the material doesn’t flow, it could be irritating and tiring for the audience. They’ll be no natural resolution and no sense of an end in sight. I don’t want that. There’s a loose theme forming, centring on my relationship with my family, but not everything fits into it. I’m not too concerned if the links are a little haphazard on Saturday  – I’m using the gig to find out what works and what doesn’t – but it’s something I’ll need to smooth out before the Soho Theatre date in March. The audience for that will probably be a lot less patient, based on previous experience. That gig is a month away today. No pressure. To throw a spanner into proceedings, I started the day by disco...

Today I visited The Actors’ Temple: the venue where I’ll be previewing new material alongside Mr PBR (A.K.A. Peter Broughton-Rates) from the 28 th February onwards. It’s a lovely little space and perfect for our needs. It only seats twenty, or thirty-five at a push. That’s good. There’ll be less pressure to fill it. Working on the assumption that we split our audience allocation down the middle, I only need to find ten willing friends a month. I’ll have to be fickle: befriending ten people every three weeks or so, then dropping them for a different ten to encourage a good turnover. As long as I don’t base my expectations on the amount of people following me on Google+ (twelve) I should be all right. Worse case scenario, I’ll turn to Grindr. There’s a projector and screen rigged, so I can go down that route should I choose to. At the moment, I intend to use A.V. minimally to punctuate a few jokes, though if I’m struggling for ideas as the months go by, I may change strate...