Edinburgh Festival 2
Just had another couple of exciting days in Edinburgh and some great chats with some amazing people so feeling inspired.
There was an impro symposium organised by The Maydays with loads of the improvisers attending, thanks Heather from The Maydays for doing such a grand job of putting that together!
Following on from that I had a massive chat with Dylan Emery from Showstopper and Crunchy Frog, very inspiring. Showstopper are doing amazingly well here – they’re playing to a massive sold out venue every night in The Gilded Balloon and the crowd loved it. But he’s still got time to have a chat and support all the other groups. We always try to work with the Crunchy Frog so we talked about how we could do that better when we get back to London, I think doing Hoopla and CFC is quite a good mix. I also got some really helpful advice about Music Box.
Also a great meeting with Chris Mead about Music Box coming here next year – grand plans! And also with Matt Andrews about Fingers on Buzzards – grand plans, hurrah!
I’ve also been on a number of workshops including ‘touring after the fringe’ and ‘meet the producers’ which have been really helpful in how to gain identity for a group.
Shows:
Chef!
A beatboxing kung fu breakdance comedy from Korea. I’m now in love with comedy from the Far East, it made me chuckle loads and was very silly while also being incredibly impressive.
No Shoes Theatre – The Improvised Musical
I really loved this show and I didn’t even know anything about it before I came here. They are based in York but the actors come from across the UK. They perform an improvised musical without any set structure or director. Very brave and a very dynamic sparky cast who could sing, do charachters and were really funny. They never broke charachter and were really refreshing. Genuine impro for an hour. I went for a drink with them in The C Venues bar afterwards and found out more about the group. Apparently they meet up just before the festival and rehearse together 10 hours a day every day for two weeks. This commitment really showed in their performance as they were very intuitive with each other and really good create a great story without a pre-decided structure.
The Couch
I can’t believe how well this is doing! Many of the performers had never performed impro performer and here they are in Edinburgh – awesome! It’s a really strong format and basing the games and scenes on genuine audience stories adds and extra interesting dimension. Geoff was excellent with interacting with an audience volunteer, very friendly and welcoming. I was lucky enough to see them backstage after and was struck by how well the cast get on together – very good spirits among the team and lots of warmth. I left with a packet of love hearts too which makes me happy.