Another Three Star review and a nice one, check out the last paragraph. Now that… is a quote:

“Entering the top room of Temple Bar, one is greeted with what sounds like a “Now That’s What I Call Birthdays” compilation, whilst a table on stage holds Twiglets, Cheese Puffs, Vol au Vents, and an ambitious number of paper plates. We are introduced to Clive, who informs us it’s his 36th birthday through an oversized badge, tiny hat, and unsightly floral shirt. Needless to say, it is a very tacky affair.

Clive paces around the room expectantly, repeatedly checking his watch, hiding his apprehension by gorging on cheese puffs, until eventually the realization that no one is coming hits him. Ironically, this premise also applied to the audience, with only myself and two others present for the performance. In a peculiar turn of events, one of the balloons begins to talk to him, leading into one of the most obscure pieces to grace the fringe this year.

An unlikely camaraderie forms between the pair as the show develops, and the balloon’s blunt sarcasm compliments Clive’s mix of desperation and disbelief well. Humour is found in Clive’s attempts to carry on the party as planned, with a fruitless game of twister, and a debate about the “pointy foods” on offer. There are few laugh out loud moments, however the quality of comedy on offer is decent, with the performance not unnecessarily long at just over 30 minutes.

Michael Buchanan Dunne has clearly rehearsed this show to no end, as his timing with the pre-recorded material was on point, making one see the balloon as a independent character itself by the end of the piece. Some of the jokes seemed predictable at times, yet there were clever aspects to match, making the piece constantly interesting. I feel that Buchanan Dunne could of developed Clive more as it seemed he had a lot to offer, however that may have been difficult in a piece of this length.

Balloon will resonate with fans of the bizarre, and anyone prepared to embrace the eccentric.”

and feeling very pooped out, like someone’s let all the air out of me and that I never want to feed my creativity ever again, but I know that after a few days of good sleep, work and mindless distractions I’ll quickly begin planning my next headf**k. That said, whilst I’m still reeling from the Brighton festival I’ve sat down and written myself a new manifesto - The Moz Manifesto - a new list of aims to achieve this year… as well as a list of rules to ensure I never again take a step backwards when I should always be charging forwards.

Balloon wasn’t a bad show, it had it’s moments and it had it’s fans, it’s just it was too niche, not funny enough, too ironic and over/under written in the wrong places. I’ve learned a hell of a lot from the show and (you might be surprised to hear) I’m glad I did it. It has shown me how far I’ve come since day one, how far I’ve come in the last six months (after I’d written it) and also how far I still need to go. Comedy isn’t a “get up on stage and do it” kind of deal, although that is often how we like to present it, it takes months / years of writing, rehearsing, trying and failing, even just to get one joke right. When it looks natural, it isn’t, it’s a combination of many many hours of practice and a series of draft jokes which have been tried many many times before, died and then buried, never to see the light of day. But you’ll never hear them.

Tonight, I shall do nothing, I won’t even unpack, tomorrow I’ll go to work as per usual, do my thing, as if Balloon had never happened. But this isn’t the end my friends, this is just the start of another beginning. A bigger, better, brighter one, where audiences laugh so hard that my show lasts twice as long as I wait for them to stop chuckling. Maybe I’ll get a standing ovation? Maybe they’ll carry me out of the venue of their shoulders like a king? Maybe I’ll get rich? Successful? Sexy girls will throw themselves at my feet… or crotch? :-) But… I’d happily settle for the audience and I all agreeing that “it was a really good show”. I was there to make them laugh, and they laughed. Job done.

More soon, but first… sleep. Mxxx

…was full, a big old room full of punters (many of them paying), who laughed and aaah’d in all the right places, I wouldn’t say they liked it but they tolerated it. I think the show was unsettled by my accidental new opening which was hilarious and had them all in bits.

Picture the scene, a man on stage preparing his props for the last performance of his new show. Above him two ridiculously hot spotlights beaming down on him, in a hot room, no windows open, on the hottest day of the year so far. The show has started, the pre-recorded audio track in on, and barely 30secs from my first line… POP my £150 contact lens falls out. I try to discreetly find it (as if this is part of the character) but all I find is dirt from the feet of so many performers before me. So being massively unprofessional, I switch off the audio-track and announce to the audience what’s just happened as they watch me crawl on my knees at floor height scanning for my missing lens. What an idiot! I even had to exclaim “this is not part of the show”, and thus they sat, watched and laughed as an imbecile in a gaudy floral shirt finally finds his lens, washes it in beer (the only liquid I had to hand) and inserts it into my eye. I got laughs, applause, sympathy, and I even surprised myself with my improvisation to cover the mistake. That was the biggest, funniest moment of the show, I just wish I’d written it and that the rest of the show was as good. You live and learn eh?

A nice, interesting end to a very horrible run. Best. Mxxx

The final performance of Balloon today, a guaranteed five people in (all family & friends) and hopefully a handful of paying punters to fill out the other seats. That said, I’m competing against a mini heatwave and the cool Brighton sea. Currently sitting in a barbers trying to get de-Yeti’d, as I’ve got a week’s worth of beard which is becoming a little too itchy for me, then I’m off to the Dumb Waiter for my final “breakfast of champions”. Nice.

Looking forward to this being over, yes it’s rewarding, and a learning curve, and fun, and you meet new people, and gain new experiences, but it’s also exhausting. Physically and mentally. I’d love this to be my life; writing by day, performing by night, but first I need to improve, and it’s these little moments, these shows which bomb which will make me stronger. Anyone who quits now shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t call themselves a writer / performer, this is comedy school and every day we learn new lessons, every day we’ll be put through tests, some we’ll pass and others we’ll fail, but you can only graduate if you make it to the end of term… or sleep with the teacher. :-)

More soon. Mxxx

Balloon - The Final Day, and it’s hot, it’s sit on the beach weather. Nice

Four people in (free), with such a small audience I didn’t feel I could charge, and I gave the show everything, a new beginning, lots of gusto, lots of sweat and I even cried across this finale, but no laughs. I would say the show was too intimate for laughter, but “funny is funny” and this show is more ironic than funny, and the irony I feel wears off pretty quick.

Am now sitting alone, in The Temple bar, supping a cold pint, everyone else laughing with cold pint like some kind of saddo. Now, I don’t want you to think I’m a depressive, I’m not, I’m just a great believer in the power of “emotional memory”. If life wants you to be happy then you laugh and laugh loud, and if life wants you to be unhappy then you cry and cry buckets. Why? Because memory is emotion. When you break up with someone, it’s not the actual breaking up you remember (the how, the why, the small details), these are normally shrouded in tears and bias, where-as for the rest of your life you’ll still be able to feel how hollow your heart felt when it happened, that knot in your belly, the tightening of your nutsack (or woman’s bits) and the headache you felt after every tear has been spilt. That… is “emotional memory” and as a writer or performer it is vital. You can’t switch emotion on, but you can replay it.

Balloon has been a hard experience for me; painful, draining, a real struggle, but (hopefully) I shall learn from it and move on to bigger and better projects. I’ve also learned from the true adage that “you have to kill your babies”. The sequence which I mentioned at the start of this week which was my favourite in Balloon and in which I hadn’t changed a word since draft one, is the Eye Spy game between Clive and Balloon. It rarely gets a titter and is painful to perform. It’s over-written and is I think the moment when the audience feel they are just listening to an audio-track, and are left watching either a static balloon or a man jigging about in front of them like a dick. So, lesson for next time, kill it before it kills you.

Last show tomorrow. Yay! Mxxx

PS: I hope I didn’t annoy anyone with my “I’ve been nominated for a Most Original Show of the Fringe award” status update. T’was just a joke, I was feeling low and very alone, but your replies really perked me up and gave me the lift I needed… I only wish the status was true. :-) Sorry… but thank you.

Sitting by the upstairs window of the Dumb Waiter cafe (Brighton), ready to consume a no4 - the breakfast of champions

Two more shows to go, not three, two, I’ve cancelled Sunday’s show. It’s always the quietest and with it being the very last day of the Fringe festival it’s unlikely anyone will turn up. I’ve got no pre-sales, I know that because I’ve checked. Yeah, I’m efficiently lazy. I’m very much looking forward to lying on my sofa on Sunday, maybe treat myself to a roast, watch a movie, and just chill. No flyering. Nothing. Heaven. This Fringe run has been a real experience, like being battered about the head with a baseball bat is an experience. It can leave you bloodied and bruised, and you know you definitely didn’t enjoy it but at least you know you’ll never want to experience it again… unless you like that kind of thing. When I started writing / performing as a bet to myself back in 2009, I decided to do that so I could experience what it was like to be a writer / performer, what goes through their heads as they write, rehearse, perform etc, rather than being just another one of these people who turn up, drink beer, watch the show, then slag it off. And I have to say it’s bloody hard work. I think in no other profession do you open up yourself to people more, you deliberately make yourself vulnerable, but also you deliberately open yourself up for criticism. A cabinet-maker, makes cabinets, sells them to a middle-man, the middle-man sells them to the public, rarely does cabinet-maker and customer ever meet to discuss his workmanship. It’s the same with bakers, yes the baker might sell us the bread they’ve baked but they don’t follow us home and watch us eat the bread to see if we really did enjoy it, do they? Do they? No, performance is unquestionably a very rewarding experience in which (and I’ve said this before) “no-where else will people give you however long you need to say whatever you want to say… and pay you to do it”, but by doing so you are forced to open your soul, lay yourself bare to them, and pray that like wolves they don’t rip you apart. Now, I’m heading off to the Dumb Waiter (aka Beano cafe) to have a gigantic breakfast, a nice coffee, work on the sitcom script I’m working on (which is looking excellent), do a little flyering and then do Balloon’s penultimate show. Possibly ever. More later. Mxxx

As Balloon would say “pop… bad”. Yes I’m quoting my own show, well someone has to.

A whopping two people in today (exc Mr Langton who drew the short straw amongst my fellow performers to see my show), and… well, they were an appreciative audience but then again what can you do when there’s as many cast as there is audience? I too have left a show saying “well done, I really enjoyed that” then out of earshot said “what a load of old turd”. And I’m inclined to agree, it has some funny lines but (as a show, as the characters are) it’s ill-conceived.

So, this is my new mission statement:
• no more performing with inanimate objects
• use soundtrack only when it suits the character and the show’s needs
•’only take a show to festivals when it’s ready
• consider directing others or hire a director
• write a great show… then perform it, don’t write it and hope to improve it
As my hero Mr Alfred Hitchcock once said, only three things make a great film “a great script, a great script and a great script”.

As I said earlier I really feel like I’ve taken a step backwards with this show, I’ve learned so much but I haven’t applied it this year. I think with the collapse of my stage version of William Goldman’s Magic (after his lawyers grabbed my goolies) I panicked, and hastily wrote a new show, and that was Balloon. Written in panic… and accepted in panic. I should have known better. More tommorrow. Gulp. Mxxx

It’s a hard day… ice-cream and some crazy golf. Oh and maybe a little performing later. Hmm, nah

Slept well, eight hours of snoring and farting, whether that’s down to having had an okay show, being half way through my run, or sheer exhaustion I don’t know. I’m feeling a little spacey and my brain’s now all fried, especially as I’ve just been accosted by a Pro-Life group who showed me a series of photos of dead foetuses. And I just saw a junkie throw up in front of me. Dear God, I haven’t even had my coffee yet. I’m taking all this as an omen…. it’s going to be an odd day. More later. Mxxx

Silver-lining folks, every cloud, therefore I’m going through these reviews with a toothpick to find a little nugget of hope, and here they are:

The Argus “the joy of the piece is the comic timing”.

Latest Seven “good clean fun… I came out smiling”.

Roughly seventeen people in, most of them paid (actual hard cash), got a couple of nice laughs and one guy at the front who obviously loves irony as much as I do was pissing himself at every line. He got it, he really got it, now all I’ve got to do is learn to win over the other 90% of the audience… or hire him and the woman from Monday to be my audience forever.

Had some mysterious technical gremlins in the sound-system which I managed to sort out mid-show and I missed two lines but then again only I would notice. I still can’t find the right tone for Clive, he’s so underwritten I’ve no idea how to direct myself. One interesting side-note is that when I take my bow at the end I get a nice round of applause, then I pick up the (SPOILER ALERT) popped remains of Balloon and bow him, and he gets a bigger applause and cheer than I do. And he doesn’t even do anything. That’s either the power of Mr Davison’s supreme acting… or the audience vocally stating that they like a burst piece of rubber more than me. Bastards. :-) A good show today, I was adequate, but I still know the show needs a major overhaul. More soon. Best. Mxxx

Barely slept again, three days on two hours sleep, tossing and turning (with more turning than tossing, unfortunately), and it’s all because I’m wrestling with the big conundrum of “what am I going to do with Balloon”, repair it, (which will take quite a while, probably longer than I have before Edinburgh rears its ugly head,) or ditch it, and bring it back next year, when I’m 100% certain I’ve got it right?

See, that should be my new mantra. Each year I’ve been saying “right, this year I’ll take two shows to Edinburgh” (smiles, rubs hands, thinks, then says) “now, what are they going to be?” and then I race like a bugger to get each show finished. Stupid eh? What I should be doing is developing a show, rehearing, doing test-runs, re-writing and re-rehearsing, and ONLY taking it to the festival when it’s ready, rather than writing for the festivals. Like I say, lessons learned eh? I no longer need to prove to myself that I can put on an hour long Edinburgh show for a whole month, I’ve done three, technically five (inc Balloon and Shopping For Bacon) or seven (if you include Snippets and Sniggerhappy). What I need to do is prove to myself that I can take a great show to Edinburgh, a crowd-please and a me-pleaser.

That’s not to say I’m not proud of Balloon, it’s got some great sequences in it, on an ironic level it’s very funny, and the role of Balloon, an incredibly hard role to pull off considering the character doesn’t move (and isn’t real) is expertly performed by Mr Mark Davison (take a bow, Sir), he actually makes the character transend not just the rubber, but the room and gives him life… the problem is me. I’ve underwritten myself, I can’t play such a tiny limited role, I’m a ham, I need my ham roles (yes, a pun), and hams don’t go well on a bed of rotten eggs (yes, two puns). There, two laughs for the audience, now go tell your face. :-)

Another show to do, gotta pull something out of the bag today, even just to entertain myself. More later. Mxxx