Essential Viewing
For the past 74 or so years, I and many other comedians have had but one goal in mind. One task that takes up most of the year to prepare for. One all encompassing, fraught whilst at the same time thrilling and exciting job that most comedians feel is the key to furthering their careers and sending them down a most glorious path. It is, of course, preparing to take a show to the Edinburgh Fringe.
I was told recently that you should do as many previews for your show as you have on your Edinburgh run which roughly equates to 25 to 30 shows so that means you’ll need to find 25 to 30 “work in progress” or “WIP” shows to hone and spin your new, as yet unfunny, material into award winning comedy gold like a modern day Rumplestiltskin but without the trading of anyone’s first born child (We really did get taught some strange stuff when we were children didn’t we?)
The only way a comedian can try out and practice new material is by standing in front of actual people and asking them to show them what is good and what is bad from the collection of scraps of paper, post it notes and hastily written key words across backs of hands in hopefully easily washed off biro but how are you meant to find an audience who are willing to be subjected to your punchlineless “whimsy” when the world is on fire and we aren’t even allowed in the same postcode as each other?
A few days ago, a journalist suggested that it was wrong for comedians going to Fringe to charge for Work in Progress shows when they have had two years to write a completed one. Now there are several things wrong with this assertion. Firstly, it’s probably necessary to dispel the notion that anyone, regardless of their jobs, took two years ‘off’. What happened globally had a massive impact on every single element of every single person’s lives, at a magnitude that even now feels impossible to process. Some people, including some journalists, retained their jobs and were able to keep working with a semblance of normality and a relatively safe salary, for sectors like comedy, it was not so easy.
It’s a very familiar story among comics, where they were the day their diaries emptied, and the mounting fear that followed when it became clear that the world was effectively closed for business, wiping out any chance of finding paid work in their profession. While the will was there as everyone scrabbled desperately to make ends meet, after years on the road building careers, not many had a competitive CV to find ‘something else’ - even without taking into account that the businesses that might be open to a slightly lighter weight skill set, hospitality and retail, were also letting go of staff and shutting up shop, meaning the competition had never been more fierce. People always used to say “well if this doesn’t work out, I’ll just go and stack shelves” but it turns out that no you won’t, especially when the whole world has gotten a job stacking shelves because that’s all there is. All that’s left for you is blind panic and hours of reminiscing about a privileged life that you completely took for granted at the time because at no point could you ever envisage a world where a comedian would be the last thing on anyone’s necessity list.
Luckily for me, I was taken in by the wonderfully generous boys at Save Our Souls Clothing in Southend who gave me a job printing their ethically sourced, brilliantly made garments and without whom I would’ve probably ended up having to boil nettle leaves for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
My work in progress show is on at The Gilded Balloon in the Dining Room at 16:30 every day from the 23rd to the 29th of August 2021 and even though it’s still a WIP show I can guarantee you that it’ll still be one of the best shows you’ve ever seen.