May 2012
27 posts
Balloon - a review from the New Current...
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...
Home, finally...
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...
The Last Balloon of Brighton Festival...
…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...
Balloon - Just Before The Pop...
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...
Balloon - Show Five
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...
2 tags
Balloon - Day Five
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...
Balloon - Show Four
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...
Balloon - Day Four
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...
Lines from the reviews which I'll have...
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”.
Balloon - Show Three
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...
Balloon - day three
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...
Balloon, show two, personal review...
Well nobody hated today’s show and no-one walked out, but then again no-one walked in either. Yup, my audience totalled zero, big fat zero, even though I pre sold five. I blame the weather, it’s a gloriously sunny day, 26 degrees and I’m now outside the venue with an icy cold pint. The show wasn’t entirely wasted though, I performed to myself the first third of the show...
Balloon the third review...
A two-star review from The Latest, which reads “It’s 7 o’clock and Clive (Michael J Buchanan-Dunne) is getting ready to host his 36th birthday party when one of the balloons starts talking to him. This ‘comedy’ got off to a slow start, with an overlong set-up scene as Altered Image’s ‘Happy Birthday’ blasted out, and went downhill from there. The jokes were weak and predictable, verging...
Balloon, second review from The Argus
“Balloon has a promising comedy premise - the loser holding a birthday party that it’s obvious no one’s coming to. Clive, wearing a loud shirt, big birthday badge and tiny party hat, paces the front room on his 36th birthday getting increasingly frustrated as time passes. As he eventually slumps in despondency, he hears a voice and slowly realises it’s coming from the balloon he’s drawn a...
Balloon - first review from Fringe Guru...
…Three Star review, not great but not as painfully bad as expected, so here goes:
“Cheese on sticks, vol au vents and cup-cakes – the table is set for Clive’s party guests, but they’re late. We know they’re late ‘cos he’s pacing up and down looking at his watch, and anxiously rearranging paper plates to hide his idle scoffing of cheesy puffs. There’s no mistaking the occasion: he...
Balloon - Day Two
Six more shows to go. Gulp. Three reviews awaiting. It’s a bright, sunny, glorious day and I’ve no idea how many audience members (& press) I’ll have today, and to be honest, I don’t want to know. I can’t say I enjoyed yesterday’s show, I felt like an extra who’d been asked to read the lines for a supporting character who’d failed to turn up. I...
Meh! (shrugs)
First performance of Balloon hits the streets… with a withered splot and a pttthhhhh hmmm ngggh. Sixteen audience in, thirteen paying punters and three members of the press, yes three, shit. One person got it, the others didn’t, and I put that entirely down to me. My timing was sharp, but my performance was lacklustre. My concept & technical ability was good but the script...
5 tags
Balloon - Day One
The day of reckoning; this is where we see whether Balloon will float, deflate, pop or remain in the bag all limp. But then again that’s what happens when you do something different. Had I have written a normal show, my greatest fear would have been that the audience would find it boring, samey, predictable, where-as with something which is very different, at least there’s a chance of...
1 tag
4 tags
The Many Rubbery Faces of Balloon...
Now, although Balloon is ready to unleash on the world, one small tiny weeny little element isn’t… me. Although I know my lines and my timings, I still haven’t found my mode. There’s an infinite number of ways I can play this character and as of yet I haven’t uncovered the essence of the character. Odd, isn’t it? Given that I wrote him, but he was always...
3 tags
The Balloon inflates...
In 48hrs my new show Balloon will launch at the Brighton Fringe Festival and I have absolutely no idea how (or whether) the audience will like, accept or understand it. I really don’t. I’ll be honest and say I had a blast writing the script, a hoot recording with the supremely talented Mark Davison (who voiced Balloon) but with this show being such an off-beat tone, they could love it,...
March 2012
3 posts
3 tags
Clearing out the Clutter...
Inside my tiny befuddled brain has sat for many years two scripts which (as hard as I tried) I could never write but not for want of trying. Every year I’d try again, then half-way through I’d hit the usual creative brick-wall, head-first and walk away, dizzy with a bloodied nose.
That said, I’ve just finished a new sitcom which I wrote solely for kicks, to entertain myself and...
1 tag
Finding Autopilot...
…and trusting that he knows how to fly the plane are two invaluable lessons for a new writer like myself; because as much as you can plan a short flight from Blankpageville to Writtensomething Town you can never prepare for bad weather when your head’s up in the clouds… and one thousand other analogies teniously associated with writing and flying.
Yesterday was exactly that, I...
1 tag
The (forever) Learning Curve...
…is actually a spiral which in a dizzying ride of twists and turns takes you whizzing passed through a series of sights you’ve seen before but are forced to revisit with ever shaper eyes. I know this because every time I sit down to write an outline for my next writing project I get caught in a whirlwind of excitement and adventure, only to to forced to see the glaring error of my ways...
February 2012
2 posts
1 tag
A warm little feeling...
It’s five AM, I wake up, coffee on, laptop on, brain on-ish, ready for a whole day of rewrites, rejigs and (let’s be honest) cursing, only to now find myself at ten thirty AM, lying on my sofa with a wry smile on my face. The rewrite is done. Structurally it’s secure, it’s pacey, entertaining and the characters are engaging. Normally by this point I’d be niggling over...
1 tag
Procrasturbation...
So there I sit, at my laptop, to work on ‘Big Fat Losers’ (my next play). I’ve got a coffee on the go, it’s not even dawn, my eyes are sleepy and my brain can barely function a simple command. Strangely I find I write better dopey than alert - “write with you editor off” as Logan Murray would say.
Anyway, ‘Big Fat Losers’ is slowly pouring out, the...
January 2012
1 post
1 tag
"Big Fat Losers" are running...
With the preparation done, I started work this morning on the second comedy I’ll be taking to the Edinburgh fringe festival this year - “Big Fat Losers”, written by but not starring me. No, for once, I’ll be taking a backseat and producing writing and directing the other two plays, as (bizarre as this may seem) I’m the only person who’s “been” to my...
December 2011
3 posts
A nice little Christmas present...
…the new play is written. I’d like to introduce you to ‘Balloon’.
Way ahead of schedule. And it’s really good, simple and bizarrely emotional in an ironic kind of way. It’s strange how as much as I wanted to ignore it, write something different, it kept drawing me back, toying with me to finish it. And every time I’d start something new I’d always...
November 2011
1 post
Sloppy Party Bottom's...
Christening? Wake? Barmitzvah? Whatever! Wonderful gig. Only my second outing with SPB and it went really well. They (from the off) understood that it was meant to be odd, and it was odd, very odd, I won’t explain it, cos it’s odd, but it went really well… and they got it. Whatever “it” is.
SPB can easily be a give or take routine, it’s so irregular and crazy...
October 2011
3 posts
mozblog: Sloppy Party Bottom's First Steps... - I... →
Sloppy Party Bottom's First Steps...
I found it a really enjoyable experience, they got it, liked it, found it odd, bizarre, they laughed, cheered, joined in with the lyrics, applauded and I even heard someone say “how’s he doing that”. And best of all, I had fun.
There’s still lots of changes to make, as I haven’t really sold SPB and there’s a little lack of logic to his logic but the first...
Sloppy Party Bottom - an awkward birth...
Over a month late because, being the primo-Donna that SPB is, he wasn’t ready for his (excuse the pun) big entrance. It’s been a bitch to write and rehearse solely because I’ve never attempted anything like this before. SPB isn’t a character, he’s a vessel, a clean slate with no rules who could explore a fantasy world with the mindset of “what if…”?...
September 2011
1 post
Sloppy Party Bottom's first steps...
It’s an amazingly bizarre experience trying to get inside the head of SPB, he’s so like me, yet we couldn’t be more different. It’s like learning to walk and talk again; he (unlike me) has no rules, no sense of morals or danger. Writing for him, finding his voice, his movements and thoughts are going to be a big challenge for me, but it’s sure going to be exciting.
...
August 2011
54 posts
Laurels make uncomfortable seats...
…so I’ve fired away with planning my new show for next year. Yes I know the festival isn’t even finished yet. And yes I know I’m still ill and recovering from the Edinblugie. And yes my lungs do hurt from four days of chronic coughing, but I’m all fired up, I know what I need to do, and I want a bloody five star review. Or two. Hundred.
This year’s show was a...
4 tags
Goodbye Mozinburgh...
It’s been fun, obviously not for my liver, my lungs, my stomach, my sanity and my arse, but it’s certainly been a hoot. I’m just glad it’s only a month, any longer and I’d be forty stone, deaf, pale and blind.
Shmozle’s been a good experiment, it’s been a successfully modest failure. Some days we rocked, some days we rolled, some days we flopped and...
shMOZle last performance...
And that is that! shMOZle is over, finished, dead, consigned to the bin. It’s never coming back, maybe an odd sketch or two but the bulk of it is currently being flushed down the comedy loo. So if you didn’t see it, you never will. Some would say that’s a blessing.
The final show went fine; full to bursting, a good audience who laughed and applauded nicely (where possible) but...
Slightly late update...
Oh sod it! I was boozing. Update wise the show went well, good audience, good laughers and applauders who stayed for the duration. Made about average but really enjoyed the gig, except when I misplaced my top-hat on stage and only found it with seconds to spare. Again Happy Shopper did well which sells the fact to me that if I was to do a solo show again I need to make the most of the...