Curiouser and Curiouser
I work with clowns. No foolin' - clowns.
It was a dank and miserable night in East Belfast but The Strand Arts Centre - an Art Deco cruise liner breaking through the murk - was an oasis of old world splendour. And a fitting home for The Old Curiosity Show, my anthology of Victorian melodramas brought to vivid, hysterical life by the Amadan ensemble, a trio of lunatics who play, between them twenty odd characters in a variety of accents, moustaches and giant, phallic props.
They were immense.
I'd seen the rehearsal the day before and I was confident it would be fine. I was more concerned with whether there would be an audience. Amadan need an audience. They feed off them, are nourished by their laughter, feast greedily on their sharp intakes of breath. Luckily an audience did turn up and they gorged themselves on their laughter. They got better and better, wilder and wilder: pies were spat out, water-pistols deployed, corpses tossed and the audience lapped it up.
There is no finer feeling than hearing an audience of, mostly, strangers, gut laughing at your jokes. But they did. I feel like a weird writer. I always feel that there's something strange about my work - something that doesn't quite land. Often because people tell me there is. That peculiar British criticism "To clever by half" appears. I never believe it - I'm duller than a thud - but it comes back time and time again: "People won't get that", "That's all very well but it'll be over the audience's head". "Ooh, you read a book! Well done!"
But they got it. They got it all. They laughed at all the jokes. Uproariously.
Susan, sat by my side, had her full-beam smile on for an hour. Its my favourite thing in the world to see.
I think we'll have to do it again. I might formulate plans. Oh, and a fucking Panto. I feel like I should write a Panto.
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| "Comedy Tonight!" |
It was a dank and miserable night in East Belfast but The Strand Arts Centre - an Art Deco cruise liner breaking through the murk - was an oasis of old world splendour. And a fitting home for The Old Curiosity Show, my anthology of Victorian melodramas brought to vivid, hysterical life by the Amadan ensemble, a trio of lunatics who play, between them twenty odd characters in a variety of accents, moustaches and giant, phallic props.
They were immense.
I'd seen the rehearsal the day before and I was confident it would be fine. I was more concerned with whether there would be an audience. Amadan need an audience. They feed off them, are nourished by their laughter, feast greedily on their sharp intakes of breath. Luckily an audience did turn up and they gorged themselves on their laughter. They got better and better, wilder and wilder: pies were spat out, water-pistols deployed, corpses tossed and the audience lapped it up.
There is no finer feeling than hearing an audience of, mostly, strangers, gut laughing at your jokes. But they did. I feel like a weird writer. I always feel that there's something strange about my work - something that doesn't quite land. Often because people tell me there is. That peculiar British criticism "To clever by half" appears. I never believe it - I'm duller than a thud - but it comes back time and time again: "People won't get that", "That's all very well but it'll be over the audience's head". "Ooh, you read a book! Well done!"
But they got it. They got it all. They laughed at all the jokes. Uproariously.
Susan, sat by my side, had her full-beam smile on for an hour. Its my favourite thing in the world to see.
I think we'll have to do it again. I might formulate plans. Oh, and a fucking Panto. I feel like I should write a Panto.
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