mostly david ephgrave

Today, I did just about the most relaxed rehearsal ever, with my cat on my lap (who didn’t laugh once). I try to vary where I do run-throughs, so I don’t get stuck in a rut, or start to only feel comfortable doing it in just one place; sometimes I’ll go through it in my office, which is the most focused space to hand, but the fact it’s in a shared building with people constantly passing my door can make me feel self-conscious if they know I'm the only one there. Rehearsing at home is nice from time to time, though it’s easier to be distracted, particularly if your house is a bit of a mess. That said, it I’m home alone I know I won’t be interrupted, plus I can talk through material at volume without worrying whether anyone can hear. There's a fine line to overrunning stand-up anyway, particularly when you’ve performed the material a lot in the past, as while you do want to remind yourself of it, you don’t want it to go stale; that’s why I decided to keep today’s...

Today was very productive, taking in a meeting regarding Mostly Comedy potentially taking on an additional venue in another local town (well city, technically, if that doesn’t give things away) plus a rehearsal for the last outing of my show ‘Now Who’s a Comedian?’ at Leicester Comedy Festival this weekend. The meeting was promising, which was great, as we’ve always felt Mostly could work well in another town provided the town had the right catchment and the people in charge of the venue were on board with the nature of the night, and were prepared to allow time for the club to grow. We’ve dabbled with taking it elsewhere in the past (most recently with last year's date at Letchworth’s Broadway Theatre which, if anything we were concerned might be a little too close geographically to Hitchin, though it did work) but something about the nature of this particular venue and its location definitely bode well for it being a potential new home; we’re going t...

I sometimes feel like most of my life is spent staring at a computer screen, doing something I don’t want to do. I suppose that’s not an alien concept for many, particularly if you work in an office, which, to be fair, I only do in a self-employed sense. But it’s still frustrating, particularly when more time is spent on admin related to work and not on actual, useful content, such as writing new material. This afternoon’s a case in point: I kicked things off (in the dullest sense of the phrase) by editing copy for the work-in-progress dates I’m doing in Brighton in May , before spending far longer than necessary editing artwork for the last outing of ‘Now Who’s a Comedian?’ at the Leicester Comedy Festival next month . The problem with the latter job is I’m (1) not as adept at Photoshop - or Gimp, to be more accurate, as that's the software I use -  and (2) it isn’t the sort of work I even want to do; other performers have people doing this st...

Tonight, I ‘Mostly David Ephgraved’ for the final time at the Leicester Comedy Festival, at the lovely Lightbox venue at Grays@LCB Depot.  Me, being aggressive at tonight's show. This was my third visit to the festival, but my first time on my own. Every year I came with Glyn (and tonight as well) I had a great time; something about the way the festival works - with most comics only doing one show - means the competition is evenly spread, so nearly everyone gets the luxury of an audience. When I arrived at the venue tonight, the guy who ran it apologised for the lack of punters (saying how much busier it had been for the rest of the festival), but when it came to it, he needn’t have worried; a few minutes before 8pm, lo and behold, a load of people arrived, which was great as comedy works best with an audience. The gig was fun one. I was conscious of the heat and the fact people began to look a little tired towards the end, but it zipped by...

This morning, Glyn, Glyn’s son Max and I went to the Broadway Cinema and Theatre in Letchworth, to have a look at the auditorium ahead of next Thursday’s Mostly Comedy and to check a couple of technical things for it. It’s fair to say they’ve done a good job transforming what was once just a cinema screen to a functioning theatre, with a stage, wing space and dressing rooms, by extending the back of the building to create more depth. It will be a good night, what with an excellent line-up (Arthur Smith and Norman Lovett) and more material than usual from us. It should look very smart; the main techie point we wanted to check today was whether the in-house projection would be suitable to run our slide show on. It turns out it is; with the right lighting, it should make for a slicker, more high-end version of the usual club night, with more of a sense of a show to it. It’s just a shame that the local papers either haven’t given the event any coverage at all ...

One thing I’ve been busying myself with today is registering the three work-in-progress dates I’ll be doing at the Brighton Fringe next year. …and so begin my thoughts on how to follow this year’s show. I haven’t put the current one to bed quite yet - I’m back at Leicester Square Theatre next week , and will be doing it as part of the Leicester Comedy Festival in February - but I’m trying to gently set the wheels in motion for what I write next. At the moment, I’m mostly concerned with the admin - booking the dates etc - but I’ve also been loosely thinking about what the content of a new show might be. At the moment it’s all very vague. Sadly, you can’t do anything like this on a whim; venues need to be found and applied for and blurbs and pictures need to be submitted before you get down to the nitty-gritty. It’s quite intimidating to think I have to start again with a solo show for the third time around. On the whole, I’m proud of what I pulled...