Gig 66: Moviejokie @ Frog & Bucket, Manchester – 11th July 2012

July 12, 2012 3 Comments

Movies! Quizzes! Character comedies! Combined? Yes, combined.  It’s only time for Moviejokie, ain’t it? (Yes it is.  Well, it was last night, but don’t quibble)

The last time I performed at Moviejokie, the character comedy based film quiz (Gig 56), I portrayed 2 characters (Clive Bunny and Harry Potter).  Last night, I performed as 3: Terry, Robert Pattinson and Casio.  Each character has a 4-minute spot, followed by 2 quiz questions.

Terry was on third in the first half.  In order to make him movie related, I came up with the conceit of Terry (allegedly) being an experienced extra in Hollywood movies and that he’d written a book about his exploits.  This allowed me to read out an extract (one less thing to learn!), which contained a filthy story about him getting jiggy with Gwyneth Paltrow.  It didn’t quite work as I had expected.  Whenever I perform as Terry, it goes one of two ways:  manic and upbeat (see Gig 62) or shambling and forgetful.  I went with the latter (I naturally slipped into it), and I think this was a mistake.  The nature of the night is that some people are there for comedy and some are there for a quiz, so I think it pays to be bigger performance-wise.  Reading the story from a piece of paper didn’t help as it meant I was very static and didn’t make full use of the stage.  Although it didn’t go amazingly well, it certainly gave me something to think about (plus, I really liked the story anyway).

I opened up the second half as Robert Pattinson.  I chose to portray R-Patz because he is a) in the movies, b) very popular and c) current.  The character that I came up with for him was that he a) thought he was a vampire, b) was a bit of a moody teenager.  I had him talk about the discrimination felt by the vampire community and then go into a long spiel about him spending the night in with Kristen Stewart because her parents had gone down the social club.  The story also featured them going to the Spar to try and get served with booze, before getting picked on by boys on BMXs.  It seemed to go down better than Terry, but it was (intentionally) quite slow-paced, with a sullen delivery and was (relatively) subtle.  As such, I think it faced the same issues as Terry’s set.

My final character for the night was Casio, the pick-up artist first seen at Gig 61.  I used the set from that gig as the basis for this, but just added the twist that he’d been able to sleep with lots of A-list actresses.  Casio is a naturally ludicrous and loud character, so it’s no surprise that he went down the best from my trio.  There was plenty of audience interaction and I was able to strut and sprawl all over the stage.  Casio had been the character that I’d felt most unsure about performing on the night (I felt under prepared), but it was easily the most fun.  It’s a character I’d definitely like to re-visit soon.

All in all it was a fun night and a good learning experience. The end.

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Gig 56: Moviejokie @ Frog & Bucket, Manchester – 9th May 2012

May 10, 2012 1 Comment

Just a couple of days after competing in Beat the Frog (Gig 54), I was back at Manchester’s Frog and Bucket, but, thankfully, this time there was no gong\frog\competitive element.  I’d been lucky enough to be asked to be part of Moviejokie, the character comedy-based movie quiz.  Yes, it’s a movie quiz where the questions are asked by people doing character comedy.  You’re right, it is as awesome a format as it sounds.

I was only asked if I could take part a week ago, so I quickly had to decide on a couple of movie-related characters to perform as (I had to do 2 4-minute spots, where I had to ask 2 questions as each character).  It seemed a no-brainer to do Harry Potter, which I had performed at the last SAS Comedy (Gig 48), and I also thought I could convert Clive Bunny – the Bobby’s Snacks obsessive – which I’d done at the SAS before last (Gig 39).  It was exciting to be able to have another crack at these characters, but it was slightly daunting that I wouldn’t really have chance to practice them in their new forms.   I worked out the basic structure of what I’d do, at the weekend, but there’d definitely be an element of me winging it on the night.

In the first half, I’d be Clive Bunny.  In his original appearance, Clive was the host of an internet consumer affairs show in which he was a little too obsessed with Bobby’s Snacks.  To get the movie aspect in, I decided to make him Bobby’s sole agent in Hollywood, and he’d talk about his movie star friends and which snacks they liked.  I basically had some packs of crisps and talked about which celebs liked which flavours and why.  The questions would be me talking about a particular snack and making the audience work out who it was that liked them.  Overall, it didn’t quite work.  I possibly tried to cram too much into the 4-minutes (a bit like when I first tried Bobby’s Snack related materials in Gig 34).  I think also that by changing the character to fit the theme, I didn’t quite have chance to work out what he was all about and how to maximise the humour from him.  It’s one of those occasions where something not quite working has given me something interesting to think about, rather than just being a bit depressing.

Fortunately, Harry Potter’s appearance in the second half went much better.  As Harry is already, technically, movie-themed, I could just do the act pretty much as it was.  The idea is that he’s fed up of wizarding (and being a movie star) and so is trying his hand at stand up comedy.  It was pretty easy to turn a couple of his “jokes” into questions.

And that was that.  It’s the first time that I’ve done 3 gigs on 3 consecutive nights and also the first time that I’d done more than one character on the same night.  Two world records falling in the same night.  That can’t be bad.

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Gig 39: SAS Comedy @ Lass O’ Gowrie, Manchester – 10th March 2012

March 13, 2012 4 Comments

Regular readers of this blog – should such a thing exist – will know about my twin obsessions of SAS Comedy and Bobby’s Snacks.   Saturday saw the two collide as I unleashed the debut performance of “Clive’s Consumer Queries”.

The basis of the act came from my ongoing blog posts about Bobby’s Snacks (read them, here), in particular the ones that featured outlandish descriptions of some of Bobby’s (excellent) products. I transcribed these posts and read them out at the last Magical Animals (Gig 34), whilst dishing out the said snacks to the audience. I don’t know exactly why I did this, other than wanting to see what happened.

It wasn’t a roaring success – the performance was hampered by a tight 4-minute slot and my descriptions being far too wordy – but I felt like there was something in it. What I felt it needed was more time to breathe, a looser structure and an idiotic character to hold it all together. Where better to put this into practice than SAS?

(Answer: Nowhere. Nowhere else would be better to do this.)

The framing device I came up with, if you will allow me to be wanky for a minute, was Clive’s Consumer Queries – a ‘hit’ internet-based consumer affairs show, presented by Clive Bunny. My preparation mainly consisted of thinking about it quite a lot. The bulk of the set would still be describing the snacks, but I knew I’d have to do this off-paper. The plan was to make a note of two or three key points for each variety, from the blog posts, and then improvise around this. I also had some ideas on what I’d say\do to set the thing up.

I had another busy week, so only actually got to do any actual practice on the day of the gig itself, and much of that was taken up deciding what to wear. I felt comfortable enough that I new what I was going to say, and that I’d be able to make some stuff up, but I just wasn’t sure that the prepared material was actually funny rather than just amusing.

As I was waiting to go on, I actually thought of a few extra things to say, and I mentally prepared myself to go on. The key with this sort of thing is making sure the character is big\daft enough and sticking with it. The thought of getting on stage started to get me excited (and I just couldn’t hide it).

Erm, boringly, it went really well. The prepared stuff worked. The stuff I thought of backstage worked. The stuff I came up with on stage worked. It’s a terrible anti-climax for this as a post, but it’s true. The improvisational aspect of it was what really made it come alive, with me doing things that I really didn’t expect to. Much of the success was down to physicality and the spontanaeity, rather than having to have thought of jokes. It’s this kind of approach that really makes character comedy special.

I really love performing in character, especially as the ones I do are basically just an excuse to act daft. In a weird way, pretending to be somebody else allows me to deliver a clear representation of who I am.

Ooooh… intellectual.

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