Last night I
downloaded Richard Herring's discography and started watching 'Menage
a Un', but I noticed that it was mostly stuff I'd seen before, and
also that it really wasn't what I expected from the best friend and
comedy partner of Stewart Lee. I went out and did a gig, and then
came back home and got into bed ready for sleep, and decided to go
for 'The Headmaster's Son' instead. I was not disappointed.
I've only watched
half of it as I write this, having just stopped at the interval, but
I already know it's going to be a great show when it wraps up after
around an hour and forty minutes. One thing that struck me almost
right away was how GOD DAMN FAST Richard Herring's delivery is – he
is like a fucking steam roller, he doesn't stop, modulating his voice
and shouting, going down, cutting himself off, interrupting his own
trains of thought. I can only guess at what is written and what is
improvised (it look very much like more of the former and only some
of the latter). He also uses barely any 'filler' words and 'um's and
'aaaah's – something I've noticed I use quite a lot and have been
debating with myself about whether or not needs to change.
At my own gig last
night I finally broke through the fifteen minute mark – I did 16:30
in front of about twelve artist-types at Club Voltaire, a space that
has become somewhat of a territorial training ground for me in the
last six months. For my show with Rob during MICF ('Two for the Price
of Free') I did fifteen each night for ten shows, but looking back –
and even at the time, really, I felt this – I almost cheated
because I had an eight minute story that would kick off about halfway
through my set and close the whole show out. I really only needed to
remember six or seven minutes of material and then once I saw the
7:30 flash from Lucy in the crowd, I knew the rest of the show would
fall in like clockwork. Doing fifteen minutes of just observations
and jokes has been something that has eluded me since the end of the
festival; every time I get up (mostly at Voltaire, but also a couple
of other times around the place: Situation, Brunny) with the
intention or opportunity of doing fifteen, I get to around ten or
eleven minutes and then bail on the rest of my material. I generally
tend to think that the stuff I've got planned to fill out the rest of
the time – even though it may have been written in the last couple
of months and done well even two weeks ago – isn't good enough, so
I bail early, rather than have a mediocre patch in my set.
That's a false victory though, because of course there are mediocre patches in my set regardless, and if I could just bring myself to breathe some life into 'old' material that isn't even that old anyway, then I'd be able to crack fifteen minutes easily. I had a chat with Beau the other day about this kind of thing and he said when he first started he was doing THE SAME five every year, noting a facebook post he wrote in 2011 saying, “I think I'm going to write my five for this year”. That idea is so foreign to me, and he acknowledged that it is ridiculous to do the same five for a year as well... but he also warned of going in the other direction and not sticking with material long enough. Having a new five every few weeks.
I think that's what I have been doing, pretty much since festival, and I need to slow down a little I think and work on my stagecraft, so I'm not going to write any material for a few weeks and just try and work on the stuff that I have right now, which is definitely good enough to stick with for a few months. We're about a month and a half out from the Melbourne Fringe too, so this is the perfect time to pick a set of material and start honing it in preparation for my nine shows there. Each show will be ten minutes, maybe I will do the same ten every night... wouldn't that be an achievement: allowing people to think that that's all the material I have. Put aside the ego for a second Tugzy, this could be a good move.
So I'm about to go have a shower before I watch the second half of 'The Headmaster's Son', and I'm really really really REALLY looking forward to seeing how Herring closes out the clear bookend that he opened at the start of the show with his story about burping in front of the whole school and his dad having to make the decision to punish him. He began his hour-and-a-half of sidetracking with the earnest statement that he was “really happy to have had the idea for this show”, and I can see where his excitement is coming from. There's nothing better than a good concept to play with.
Peace, Taco.
That's a false victory though, because of course there are mediocre patches in my set regardless, and if I could just bring myself to breathe some life into 'old' material that isn't even that old anyway, then I'd be able to crack fifteen minutes easily. I had a chat with Beau the other day about this kind of thing and he said when he first started he was doing THE SAME five every year, noting a facebook post he wrote in 2011 saying, “I think I'm going to write my five for this year”. That idea is so foreign to me, and he acknowledged that it is ridiculous to do the same five for a year as well... but he also warned of going in the other direction and not sticking with material long enough. Having a new five every few weeks.
I think that's what I have been doing, pretty much since festival, and I need to slow down a little I think and work on my stagecraft, so I'm not going to write any material for a few weeks and just try and work on the stuff that I have right now, which is definitely good enough to stick with for a few months. We're about a month and a half out from the Melbourne Fringe too, so this is the perfect time to pick a set of material and start honing it in preparation for my nine shows there. Each show will be ten minutes, maybe I will do the same ten every night... wouldn't that be an achievement: allowing people to think that that's all the material I have. Put aside the ego for a second Tugzy, this could be a good move.
So I'm about to go have a shower before I watch the second half of 'The Headmaster's Son', and I'm really really really REALLY looking forward to seeing how Herring closes out the clear bookend that he opened at the start of the show with his story about burping in front of the whole school and his dad having to make the decision to punish him. He began his hour-and-a-half of sidetracking with the earnest statement that he was “really happy to have had the idea for this show”, and I can see where his excitement is coming from. There's nothing better than a good concept to play with.
Peace, Taco.
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