The Maydays
Well that was a fun one. I’m currently sitting on the Northern Line again heading south to Morden. Why do you need to know that? Don’t know, it seems if I have two pints this blog contains pointless facts about my life, and makes it further away from the American style useful five points to success blog I actually meant it to me. If it helps, I’m listening to David Bowie again doing “that man who sold the world” song that Nirvana did uncut years later. Fuck me, that bit almost sounded cool. I went to gigs once me. In fact me and Edgar were in a band, even though we didn’t play instruments. We just planned our NME interviews.
Show tonight was fun. We played to a small crowd. In fact before we went on we were even planning cancelling it, but then just before magic people turned up and it was all good. The audience gave us stories and we gave them scenes based on those.
Before the show I’d repeatedly asked John Cremer what we were doing and he almost couldn’t compute the question. “Just take suggestions and make stuff up” he said and shrugged his shoulders. So I asked Katy Schutte what we were doing and she just said “don’t worry about it”.
In a comedy world of formats and marketing strategies and themes and so on it’s refreshing that The Maydays do genuinely just, err, make stuff up. I can’t think of anyone else who does just do that in its purist form.
And tonight it seemed to come together. I particularly enjoyed being a boss of a boss who had earned the right to be a dickhead, and a marathon runner’s friend obsessed with the word “training”. In fact there were lots of magic moments.
Music has now changed to The Yardbirds, and I’m dreaming of a sandwich. I just have to navigate past the Morden Kebab Shop without giving into whatever lure they have on offer.
And oh yeah! I totally used loads of status in the show, and it seemed to work. Low and behold it allowed me to play background characters with more confidence, because they didn’t ‘die’ just because they weren’t talking and it generated lots of stuff. Usually the only thing I take into shows is “react to everything the other person says or does and then add a tiny detail to it”, but I’m now adding status to this. 5 years of impro and I’ve gone from being able to do one thing, to being able to do two things. At this rate I’ll be able to do everything in 85 years time, can’t wait.