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Blog: Post-Tour Ruminations
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The first is on the nature of Fringe Festivals, which basically appear to be exactly the same as they were a decade ago when Steve and I were buzzing around doing them. As far as I can gather they are still run by CRAZY LOONS who flipping love fringe festivals, so much so that they have basically MARRIED them. They are also still admministered on the ground by similarly-styled volunteers who are pretty much uniformly LOVELY and EXCITED to be doing it. The only slight change is that the festivals now seem to be slightly better organised, especially in terms of letting you know about ticket sales. Over the past couple of months I have come to LOVE this, going onto either the specific festival's own system OR, more usually, the mightily named Eventotron (which loads of them use) to see if anybody's bought any more tickets in the past couple of hours. I'm already missing it!
It's also been lovely being thrown back into the bizarre mix of shows that you end up playing with at these events. There's loads of the usual stand-up comedian doing their Standard Hours about things they're pretending have happened to them, but you also get extremely enthusiastic Improv Troupes (who always seem to have met on a COURSE and loved it so much they carried on), vast casts of musicals featuring someone's uncle who still hasn't grasped how dancing works, musicians trying to string a bunch of songs together into a THEME (imagine!), prop comedians, people doing PUNS, people explaining things while being frightened of microphones, and many many other types of enthusiasts who have taken the bold and brave decision to get up in front of people and SHOW OFF just for the LOVE of it. I salute them all, and indeed hope to be included as one of them, as they are BLOODY GRATE!
Doing loads of gigs in the same short period of time has also reminded me that it is a) fun b) KNACKERING to do so. There's something jolly exciting about having a particular bag that is always PACKED (or in my case that you THINK is always packed but is sometimes missing crucial elements) that you can just pick up and take with you for a SHOW. There's also something BITTERSWEET about the bit after a show when you really want to hang around for longer but have to rush out to get a TRANE, and then the MILD BLUES the next day when you've still got a bit of the BUZZ of it all zinging around in your heart but no show to go to.
Doing a SPECIFIC show also has its own magic - it's lovely to go and do a gig where you don't know exactly what you're going to be doing until you write the setlist (NB or in my case don't know exactly what you're doing at the time, but that's another matter), but doing the SAME show each day is strange and wonderful because you get to know WHERE in the show you are, and feel the small differences in how it works between you and the audience each time. With this one the show has changed A LOT on pretty much every performance, so I've also had the DELIGHT of seeing what works and what doesn't, trying out new stuff each time to tinker around and try and make it (EVEN) better.
That tinkering around has been VERY THORT PROVOKING too - going to see Mr D Munro a few weeks ago was a PROFOUND EXPERIENCE for me, as he not only came up with lots of GRATE IDEAS that I was able to integrate into the show but also came up with lots of other GRATE IDEAS that I definitely did NOT. Talking through it with someone who is an EXPERT on stand-up comedy and how to make it work made me realise that I am definitely NOT doing stand-up comedy, and helped crystalise for me some of the reasons I don't LIKE a lot of it. It's something about the authenticity of it all - with lots of stand-up, particularly the "confessional" style, I get the queasy feeling that the comedian is trying to form an emotional relationship with me as an audience member through things that are not actually true. I don't mind it when it's someone clearly In Character, any more than I do when I (being fancy) see a PLAY, but there's a line that gets crossed when the comedian appears to be LYING to me for their own gain that turns me off.
Of course, "not enjoying stand-up comedians telling untrue personal stories" may sit alongside "getting upset when plans change" and "not liking noisy shopping centres" that have CERTAIN OTHER CAUSES, but still, it all made me think A LOT about who I am when I am ON STAGE, even when that stage is a corner of a room above a pub. DEEP, yeah?
Most of all though the whole experience reminded me how much I like going out and meeting PALS. In earlier times I leaned into this aspect of it all so much that I ended up doing 50-70 gigs a year, most of which were to small rooms of people who I could probably just as easily have gone for a CURRY with instead. It's been a while since I did all now though, which made it even lovelier to zoom around with an excuse to see lovely people I hadn't seen for ages, even if it did mean having to dash off to catch a train afterwards!
posted 6/8/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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