Blowing my own trumpet

Warning: the present post contains some shameless gloating and scenes of a self-backslapping nature. If you think this might offend you, stop reading now. On the other hand, if people were training for a marathon, would you tell them that it would be more considerate, healthier and more pleasant to have a gentle, short stroll? Now consider that the Fringe, with its thousands of one-person shows and everybody's constant struggle to get noticed, is the Olympics of Narcissism. With just few days to go I should practise the required skill, shouldn't I?

All this to justify the choice to copy here the amazing comments I got from some of those who took part to the other night preview. Here they are:

Excellent evening - the comedian was so witty and was even better than I had expected! He was a spot-on choice and made everyone laugh so much - lovely, clever jokes about language and culture. Fantastic fun.

Good venue, great comedian, definitively a good laugh!.

I particularly admired Giacinto's verbal virtuosity.

The stand up comedy was great fun. A huuuge THANK YOU! goes to Hycinth aka Jack for having delighted us with his comedy.

. And now the most topical of the comments received:

Compliments to hyacinth giacinto who iam sure would blow his own trumpet if he could reach it.

What can I add? There will be a time to come back to earth, exercise some serious self-criticism, maybe even some soul searching. And that time might come sooner that I would like, maybe already after the premiere. But bare with me for now.

Just like the Azzurri

Before tonight preview I was in a very paradoxical psychological situation: I was worried of not being worried enough. This takes a bit of explanation. I'm probably one of few people who have always loved exams and job interviews, that kind of situation that really asks you to perform well. I'm a like the Italian football team, that always plays badly in the first round, waiting for the stakes to become high enough before really start playing. Generally speaking this is of course a blessing, since it means that your best performances also happen when it really matters. But the negative side is that you need to keep the stakes rising, otherwise you risk a drop. So, after last week preview, I wasn't really looking forward to do one more preview in front of a smaller crowd, made of people who were either Italian or studying Italian and without a microphone. At the end, it went very well, I was indeed more relaxed than the last time, but apparently not complacent, given that people laughed generously. The funniest bit was hearing people telling me afterwards: "It went well tonight, but would it work in front of a British audience?". So, I need to understand that, regardless of how much I like adrenaline, while I'm enjoying my high I'm probably looking too tense, while when I'm relaxed I'm probably looking confident. Doing sixteen performances in a row will be a good test in that direction. Besides, it would be nice seeing Italy playing well in that bloody first round, for a change.

Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!

My poor friends, acquaintances and colleagues might have noticed an increase in the frequency of my Facebook updates, blog posts and Chortle contributions (more on which later). I guess the main reason is that after the preview I feel more confident about the show as such, so all my anxieties are now concentrated on the question: "will anybody come to see it?" (of course there is also a deeper explanation, given that I'm an only child and that there must be some reason why I like standing in front of a room full of people with the lights pointing at me and a microphone, but I'm degressing)

So, today I did something a bit desperate, which might even backfire. I used the "media contact list" received from the promoter of the Free Festival to send the following press release:

Italian comedian wishes death to Berlusconi

Announcement made during the London previews of the show "Giacinto Palmieri: Italian misfit" amid rapturous applause.

London-based Italian comedian Giacinto Palmieri started the previews of his Edinburgh Fringe show with these words:

"I don't have any joke on the death of Michael Jackson, but I have some brilliant jokes about the death of Silvio Berlusconi. I can't wait for them to become topical. Hopefully in time for my Edinburgh show. He is lucky that I'm not doing the first week".

The audience, which included many Italian members, demonstrated to be in tune with Mr Palmieri's wishes by laughing, clapping and shouting "Hear! Hear!".

The medical staff of Mr Berlusconi have yet to comment.

Will this cause me problems? Will I look desperate in my attention seeking? I don't know, but it's true that there is no such thing as bad pubblicity, as Richard Herring and Brendon Burns recently discovered (my envy was all too clear from my previous post, even if of course we play in different leagues), expecially when nobody has ever heard of you. Let's see.

Meanwhile, a much safer promotion has come from Chortle, which has published an edited version of my Friday post, with the details of my show at the foot of the article. Now I only have to hope that comedians and critics will be so busy with Edinburgh that my article will remain for a while at the top of the Correspondents section's links. Now, THAT was a bit too much!

Brian Logan, are you reading this?

Yesterday I did a gig run by Manos the Greek and I had the chance to see a preview of his show. I'm very interested in what he does since his show is about being a Greek in Britain and mine is about being an Italian in Britain. I'm sure that if Brian Logan of the Guardian had a chance to see both our shows he would decide, again, that two make not only a crowd but a movement, he would call it something offensive like "The new Eurotrash of comedy", Manos and I would be given an entire page of the Guardian to reply and droves will flock to see our shows as I'm sure will do for Richard Herring's and Brendon Burns'. Stop dreaming.

By the way, fortunately Manos' approach and mine couldn't be more different. At least for the first part of his show, he plays some sort of Greek Al Murray character, ironically emboding and exagerating the national stereotypes. Even when he steps out of character, his view of the world is still that of the Greek observing British live and comparing it to "back home". My point of view, instead, is that of the "misfit", even more so in Italy than in this country, the culturally "contaminated", who doesn't know where "home" is anymore and probably never knew, hence his decision to move. My amusement is as much directed to the Italian society seen from my new British perspective than the other way round. I'm not saying that this is "better", it's just different. Althought I must admit I can't help making it sound more articulated. But this is MY blog after all.

So, movement or not, I do think that festival goers should come and see both our shows and that the contrast would only add clarity to them.

Good luck, Manos, see you in Edinburgh!

Laugh with me, laugh at me

During last night preview a little episode occurred to me that made me think a about comedy, its pleasures and its risks. Unfortunately to explain what happened I'll have to describe one of my routines and quote some jokes, but I hope I'll not spoil it too much for anybody. There is a moment in the show where I pretend to receive a phone call from my mother (that was the first spoil: now you know that she is not really calling me!). At her insistance to marry the daughter of a friend, I protest: "But she has only one eye! (pause) What do you mean with 'that would higlly boast your possibilities'!?. That's a nice turn of phrase for somebody who doesn't speak a word of English!". Given that one of the main themes of the show is language, in my intention the last line was the real punchline, revealng the absurdity of the entire conversation (so I haven't spoiled too much after all). But what I didnd't bargain for was the MASSIVE laugh I got at previous line, the one about having only a one eye being an advantage in evaluating a potential bride. It's true that a female voice in the audience shouted "that's so unfair!" (I'll need to check the recording to be sure that my subconscious didn't play a trick at me there), but the general feeling was the audience were expressing an overenthusiastic agreement with the supposed judgement of my mother. So, were they laughing with me or were they laughing at me?

The line, I guess, it's quite a fine one. Apparently, in some Roman and Medioeval celebrations a "fool" was elected Carnival King and enjoyed absolute power for a day, at the end of which he was killed. Today we live in gentler times, but I think that something of that role survives in the modern comedian. In a sense, the comedian "sacrifies" himself as a laughing stock. Ok, if he or she is a good comedian people will laugh with him and not at him, but there is also a implicit agreement going on that says: I give you, the audience, the authorisation to laugh at me, with my approval and to my own advantage, so you don't need to feel guilty about it. The pleasure that incurs is, in part, the pleasure of doing something that would normally be forbidden or frown upon but that is here exceptionally allowed. Which, I guess, is the essence of the Carnival. Probably the most extreme example is when comedians with a disability made jokes about their own condition. I'm thinking, for instance, of Liz Carr, Lawrence Clarke or my brother in open spot arms Max Turner. Laughing at accents, nationalities or ginger air can be allowed in many "normal" social conditions, but laughing at disabilities is definitively taboo. These comedians bravely allow us to do just so for the duration of their set.

So, why was I slightly upset by that reaction? After all, I have never considered my look one of my strongest assets, even if I have never targeted one-eyed women for that reason, which I guess would make sense only if I was in some way three-dimensionally challenged. I guess the reason why that episode left a bitter after-taste is that my look wasn't the subject of the routine, which was more about Italian mothers and the absurdity of the two of us speaking in English. Of course, I was consciuous of the comic potential of that specific "turn of phrase", but I wasn't really granting the audience the license to laugh at the way I look. Now I will, I'll keep that line in my set and I'll enjoy the big laugh.

In the meantime, to the girl who shouted "that's so unfair!"... drink?

Post-preview post

Yesterday I passed an important milestone in my road to Edinburgh: I did my first public preview of the entire 30 minutes set. In the preparation to it, I felt it was an event as important as the premiere itself, since I knew I would perform in front of a probably bigger audience, many of which friends, and I knew that a failure would have taken the wind out of my sail. Fortunately it went very well, I got the laughs, I received compliments that sounded sincere and some very interesting criticism and suggestions too. Of course it wasn't perfect. This morning I realised with horror that I forgot to tell the strongest joke of my phrasal verbs routine, even if of course the audience couldn't know it. And in the second half some jokes were delivered in a less sharp way and got a smaller reception than expected. But I got the confirmation that the set holds well together and I can do half an hour without boring the audience to death, to the contrary they told me that it looked shorter... well, I recorded it and it was 25 minutes, so they had a point after all, but that isn't completely off the mark and I can add some topical material. And the ending, which I had tried only once in a "private" preview at a party and I was very worried about, seemed to work well. Now I'll listen to the recording and I'll try to fix the things that might work better, but generally speaking I feel confident. Sorry for blowing my own trumpet.

By the way, the really amazing thing of the evening was the turnout from my friends. I promised the promoter to bring at least 20 people and I was very worried, since most people don't like the idea of travelling to Stockwell, but at the end I contributed to the event with 23 guests and they were all very supportive. It really felt very nice.

Now I'll have a last, semi-private preview for a group called Italian Meetup, made of people who are studying Italian or who are Italian themeselves (even if the show will of course be in English), then up to Edinburgh. I'm really enjoying the road.

Suffering for my art

I spent a week in Southern Italy and my God if I felt a misfit! I was born and brought up in Milan but my family are from Puglia in the South, where my parents spend the summer and most of my other relatives live all year. There is a huge cultural difference between a big city in the North and a small town in the South and I have always felt an alien there. The most frequents arguments of conversation were food, money and gossip. Fortunately every now and then the subject of politics came out. Italians say that they hate politics but they can't stop talking about it. I saw a newspaper with the headline "Berlusconi bastona gli inglesi", i.e. "Berlusconi gives stick to the English" (meaning the British). The reference was to Mr B's reactions to an article in the Guardian. My father showed the headline to me and joked that I should better be careful. I said that I was preparesd to seek asylum in nearest British consulate, like a British Asian girl forced to marry a cousin in some Pakistani village.