Gig 28: Spotlight @ The Storey, Lancaster – 20th January 2012

 

 

 

Ste Price was born in 1975. Yes, I know, it’s really hard to believe that he’s that old, but he is. Get over it.

 

Despite showing a flair for acting daft at an early age (he once pretended to be a Russian on the play area of a Hoseasons’ holiday park, aged 9).  It wasn’t until 2011 that he decided to perform in any sort of official capacity.  Since that decision (the one about performing in some form of official capacity), he has tried his hand (and the rest of his body) at stand up, character comedy, improv, poetry, short plays and erotic fiction.  There’s literally no limit to the number of ways that he can adequately convey material.

 

He is very much looking forward to performing some jumble of the above at the January’s Spotlight.

 

P.S. ‘He’ is really ‘me’.  It’s ‘me’ writing this, but I’m pretending to be, like, a journalist or something.

After performing at the open-mic at November’s Spotlight (Gig 20), I was kindly asked to return for a guest spot.  As the evening isn’t a comedy night – it encompasses any performed writing and music – it was the perfect opportunity to try some material that was a bit different.  Primarily, I took some of the blog posts from The World of Sherby57 and decided to see if they would work in front of an audience.

My set list was:

1) A joke (“stretched cat”) following by the return of the Joke Book.  I mixed this bit up by numbering each joke in the book and asking the audience for a number to randomise which joke they got.

2) 2 Poems:  A limerick and a political piece.

3) An “essay” called “Times and Trains – An Essay”

4) An “essay” describing my sense of humour.

5) An extract from my, allegedly, upcoming autobiography.

6) A short play: “One Day in Liverpool”.  This was performed as per Gig 26.

Because I was covering a variety of different types of writing, I tied the act together under the mock-pretentious banner of “An Odyssey\Journey Through The Arts”, and this allowed me to assume a strong on-stage persona.

Only my opening gag and the play were performed off-paper meaning there wasn’t that much for me to remember.  Combined with the audience not being there for comedy, this seemed to take a lot of pressure off and I could really get into the material and mess around with it.  A lot of the laughs I got came from completely off-the-cuff asides, and this is something I’ve really wanting to do more of (as I said in my write up of Gig 25).

I was really pleased with how it all went – apart from the essay about my sense of humour, which got nothing – and it was probably the most confident and relaxed that I’ve been on stage.  I know need to think of a way for me to translate this freedom onto my straight stand up sets, as I think it would really mark a big improvement in my performances.

Hopefully I’ll be asked to perform at Spotlight again soon as my mind is reeling with what sort of nonsense I can try next.

You can find out more about Spotlight, here.