An (almost) perfect day

Was it really four days ago that we started the show in front of two people? Today I had to move twice to make room for more and more audience members. At one point Alice looked me and asked: "How did that happen?". You never really now, but it was probably a combination of the rain, the cumulative effect of the heavy flyering in the past three days, the festival getting into his full throttle and maybe a bit of word of mouth. And we didn't waste this opportunity, we had a very rewarding show. The day hadn't started that well for me. While having breakfast in a café I had bumped into a German comedian friend of Alice who had come to see us the night before, somebody who never performed here but apparently is big in Germany. I made the worst possible error a performer can make: I asked him what he thought of my set. First he struggled to say anything at all, then he just said that my attitude was "too aggressive", while failing to say anything about my material apart from the truly deflating "you'll get better lines during the run". Now, a "normal" person in a "normal" situation would have probably forgot the remark, but there is nothing "normal" about the Fringe. It's such a demanding experience that your confidence is constantly exposed to anything that might even vaguely affect it. More than one person told me that there should be a counselling service for performers, and probably there is, but at least we comedians have a great advantage over other types of performers: we can say whatever we want on the stage and we can make a joke of whatever happens to us. This year I have decided that whatever affects me will find its way into the show, not only because it's best way to deal with it, but also because it's the best way to keep the show "true" to how I'm feeling in the moment. So I cracked the quite easy but at the end very effective line "I have been told that my stage attitude is too aggressive... by a German", got a big laugh and, with it, a fully restored confidence. With a big "Fragile" written across it, just in case.

A suitably manic day

Today we had the best show so far. The audience was decent in number and very nice, Cecilia and Alice were in great form and I found the right level of energy. I interacted a lot with the audience, got some big laughs and really enjoyed performing. Strangely enough I think I was helped by the crazy way I had spent the previous four and half hours: queueing to spend 5 minutes with a journalist from the Scotsman! It was in fact the day of Meet the Press I'm not exaggerating at all: I joined the queue outside Free Central at 1.30pm, when inside I joined the Scotsman queue straight away and I finally had my five minutes at 6pm! I was of course tired and angry of the total pointlessness of all this, but at another maybe slightly masochistic way I really enjoyed the experience. It's just amazing to see so many people, some in their scene costumes, spending so much time to have their chance to explain, for instance, that "Hitler - The Musical" was really a good idea (I didn't make it up, they were in front of me). It's a spectacle to behold, something like the canteen scene in Star Wars. And the atmosphere of camaraderie among the performers was really very nice. With the show starting at 6.30pm I had to rush to the venue straight after my five minutes of press attention, so I did the show and I then rushed to see another show straight afterwards (the always brilliant Alex Horne). As a result I had the first food of the day at 10pm, apart form a cappuccino and a croissant in the morning and an endless string of cokes while queueing (and while resisting to the temptation of the free beer offered by a sponsor, which I knew would not be good for my performance but which never the less contributed to the general gaiety of the situation). Now I will need to understand how to keep that energy, or summon it at will, without having to stand for four and half hours and getting high on sugar and caffeine every day for almost a month. Or maybe not.

Two shows and two reviewers in one day

Yesterday I was wishing for more energy and more pressure and today my wish was granted. First in the afternoon I took part to Ivor Dembina's "Desert island jokes", a panel show about comedians' favourite jokes and what makes them funny. It was a very enjoyable experience, I particularly like the way the audience were involved in the discussion. In the audience there was a reviewer from ThreeWeeks, although I wonder how you can review what was just a discussion. Then I did a lot of flyering, helped but the good weather. And it worked: the audience's size was much better than yesterday. And fortunately so, given that in the audience there was a (different) reviewer... from ThreeWeeks! Are they out to get me? Weird being seen twice in a day by the same the same pubblication. ThreeWeeks claims to review every single show, I have always been sceptical, especially since they failed to review me two years ago, but now I'm starting to believe in their claim. My performance was much more focused and energetic than yesterday's, although some of the jokes got a smaller response than expected. It was some sort of highly demanding, slightly jaded festival audience. Oddly enough, at some jokes the critic was the only one laughing. I hope it wasn't some sort of very highly sophisticated double bluff, but it was a much better evening than the one they came to review last year (and Cecilia and Alice were very good too), so the only way is up.

First show done

Here I am, using a brief insomniac moment at 4.52am to catch up with my "daily" blog. So, after a very pleasant day as a member of the audience we had our first show. During the day I did some flyering, but I had nothing of the manic energy filled by fear and desperation that last year propelled me around Edinburgh like a crazy bullet. On one hand I was happy to have a more relaxed experience, on the other I was missing that energy. But maybe the God of the Fringe is already at work to find a solution. In fact, we started the show with TWO audience members! During the course of the show it went to NINE, a massive 450% increase. Both Cecilia and Alice did a sterling job with the human material at hand, to the point that when it was my turn I commented that if the Hammersmith Apollo had the same ratio of hilarity per person the theatre would literately crumble... "take that, Michael McIntyre!". They were both confident and focused and I was really proud of them and of the role I played in putting the three of us together. Unfortunately when it was my turn I had a lacklustre performance. It was a bit of a surprise since I was coming from three very good London previews. But in London we had big audiences, which always gives me a great boost. It's not the first time tI notice that I'm not that good at facing a small audience. After having seen a healthy audience in the same room at 2.45pm (so, no excuse there) I was really disappointed to see that our was much smaller and I probably never recovered from that disappointment. There are also some changes I can do to the material, in particular I'm getting too early into the language stuff, so I should introduce myself a bit more. But I'm very happy that Cecilia and Alice were in top form and enjoyed their gig and I'm even more confident that we have a lot of potential this year. And after this experience I'm pretty sure that, from tomorrow, that manic energy will probably be back.

The quiet before whatever will come

Responding to great popular demand (thanks, Adrian) I'm resuming the daily schedule of this Edinburgh diary. Here I am, in the city itself. After an uneventful journey I arrived at Haymarket station, where my showmate (and now flatmate) Cecilia came to escort me to our new temporary home. The flat makes a huge difference from the cesspit where I stayed last year, it's bright and feels very clean and fresh. We soon went to check out the venue and to verify that the posters and fliers had arrived as promised. The confirmation that they did came as soon as we entered the venue, given that the staff recognised us from the posters. We had a look at the room itself and I found confirmed all the drawbacks I remembered from watching shows there, above all the passage to the kitchen and the ladies toilet. Somebody from the stuff told us not to "take the piss" out of the people going to the ladies, which given my interest in idioms gave me a lot to think about. We also went to Fringe Central, where I met the always supportive Ivor Dembina, the first familiar face I have seen this year. He very honestly agreed with my analysis that last here I overstretched myself and I'm grateful to him for this. I have now come to terms with that recognition and I'm really looking forward to a festival in which I can feel more confident and relaxed. Or at least this is how I was feeling until I saw a HUGE poster of Frisky and Mannish, a duo that shared with me the stage of the Hackney Empire final two years ago. Now, I don't know why that should impress me, they were already big back then and as a cabaret act they are not somebody I can feel in competition with. But I couldn't help thinking that they probably don't have the problem of their room being crossed by the passage to the ladies toilet. For a moment I thought of Edinburgh as some sort of school reunion, where it's almost impossible not to compare achievements, disappointments and belly sizes. But it was just a moment. This year I feel that I have my strongest set so far and that I can both enjoy myself and demonstrate something to the others. If that requires a bit of staff-disapproved piss taking... well, let it flow.

Can't wait

Even before it opens, this year’s Edinburgh Fringe has already taught me the first, precious lessons. The previews are going very well and I’m really enjoying doing them. This might sounds unremarkable, but for me it marks a striking difference from where I was at this stage last year and it makes me think about what went wrong back then.
This will be my third as a performer. Two years ago my debut was a half hour free show that was received very well, earning me, among other things, a very good review from The Scotsman’s Kate Copstick, which I have been quoting at every opportunity ever since. Last year I decided to do a paid-for one hour show and it was, to use a nice English expression, a completely different kettle of fish. I really struggled to get decent audience numbers, I lost a lot of money and the reviews’ range spanned from the very bad to the quite bad. The reasons very multiple. One was that I tried to make my show “thematic”, but this meant that I had some parts that sounded too big-headed, while other parts were just not funny enough. And the pressure I felt meant that my performance was often quite stiff, I wasn’t really “playing” and I wasn’t really enjoying myself.
This year I decided to revert most of last year’s decisions. First of all, I decided to go back to doing a free show. Given Edinburgh’s level of competition, if you are not a big name doing a paid-for show means almost certainly that you are going to struggle. To make things worse my show was overpriced. For a venue’s promoter having ten people paying £10 or twenty paying £5 is the same, but for a comedian it makes a lot of difference, given that comedy needs audience like swimming needs water. I managed to have decent numbers only by giving every day a number of tickets for free, which doesn’t make any sense when you are paying for the venue, it means that you are actually subsidising people to come and see you. And last year’s well deserved nomination of Imran Yusuf’s free show to Foster’s Best Newcomer award was the sign that the prejudice against free shows is now a thing of the past.
Secondly, I decided that I don’t really need a theme. Themes are good if they “emerge” from the jokes themselves, but they are bad if they are imposed over them. One day I would like to do a thematic show about language, but only when I’ll have enough strong jokes on the subject for the show to become thematic “per se”. The same applies to having “a message”: as a comedian your message is the puzzlement and amusement towards the world you express with your jokes or maybe the pleasure and intellectual freedom you communicate with your word play and paradoxes. To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan: the jokes medium is the message.
Thirdly, I’m not going solo, but I’m sharing the hour with two other comedians, actually comediennes: Cecilia Delatori and Alice Frick. We met on London’s comedy circuit and I was really impressed by how energetic, intelligent and funny they are. Sharing a slot is not only a way to avoid overstretching your material, but it’s also a great occasion to get continuous feedback from people who can see every step of its development. Not only, but you feed on each other’s energy and enthusiasm. Edinburgh can be a very stressful and lonely experience so I’m really looking forward to have somebody with whom I can share the highs and the inevitable lows.
In other words, I’m confident that this year I will really enjoy my Edinburgh experience and, hopefully, as a result my audience will enjoy their experience too. Cant’ wait.

“An Austrian, an Italian and someone from Slough” will be at Laughing Horse Free Festival @ Meadow Bar, 6.30pm,4-28 August (free with voluntary donation at the end).

BREAKING NEWS: Giacinto announces his plans for the next Edinburgh

It's the beginning of February and the plans for the next Edinburgh Fringe are starting to take shape. So, here are the news: I will do a free show with Cecilia Delatori and Alice Frick. In a sense I'm reversing almost every decision I took last year: free show instead of paid for, three hands instead of solo... the only decision I'm sticking with is doing the full run. So, is this an admission of failure? Have I survived only one season in the Premier League? Part of me feels that way. But on the other hand, last year's show was such a struggle that I really need to relax a bit more, invest less money and go back to having fun. The Foster's nomination won last year by Imran Yusuf has hopefully removed once and for all the stigma against free shows. And running a solo show all by yourself, I mean without a production and promotion team behind you, is really hard work. I'm really looking forward to working with Cecilia and Alice, they are of course comics I really like, they are at their first Edinburgh as comics (although Cecilia has a lot of Edinburgh experience as an actress) and consequently very enthusiastic and motivated. I really hope that the interaction between us can be stimulating for everybody. And, above all, that we can enjoy ourselves, a goal so easy to forget in that crazy pinball that is the Edinburgh Fringe.