mostly david ephgrave

Sometimes, a venue’s understanding of what you need to put on a show can vary considerably. The Usual Suspects; posing with Reginald D Hunter at last night's London Mostly Comedy (14.06.18) Such was the case at last night’s gig, which took place in the restaurant of an aircraft museum, where we arrived to find the only staging available was a single 1x2metre rostrum that could barely fit a performer on it, let alone a mic stand too. Thankfully, after a little gentle pushing to get the staff to search the other spaces on site, they managed to find a few more blocks to bolster our bijou stage. I don’t know what we would have done without them; it’s not like we were presenting a small-scale open mic night: the acts appearing were in the top tier of their game. We’d also been as clear as we could in the lead-up on what we needed, and ended up supplying all the equipment bar the stage, which we’d left in their hands. This wasn’t the on...

Today, Glyn and I visited a museum in London where we’re likely to be hosting a one-off Mostly Comedy in June (as if we don’t enough Mostly Comedys to contend with in the near future). When you’re approached to run a club by a venue that doesn’t usually stage theatrical events you can never be quite sure if they’ve considered fully how you need a focused space. This was even a problem at one of Mostly’s past long-term homes; this particular venue was managed by two people, one of whom was 100% onboard with our requirements, while I suspect the other had pictured it more like a musical open mic night with someone strumming away on a guitar in the corner while the audience drank and chatted away. That kind of set-up is bad enough when you’re playing music - I’ve done enough gigs like that myself, believe me - but it's disastrous for comedy, which requires complete attention to work; you can’t build a story with people coming and going, both literally and...