edfringe 2017, part.... 3?
Nov. 15th, 2017 10:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peiyentyping this while procrastinating on a powerpoint presentation. hoorah. it's time to dig through my 3-month-old memory banks because it's anotherrr edfringe ramble! lol I'm doing these so slowly that it might be edfringe 2018 by the time I finish.
130817
1555 Tom Neenan (Underbelly Med Quad)
1820 Katy Brand (Courtyard)
2020 Max and Ivan (Dome)
1. First saw Tom Neenan in 2016, and his lovable combination of character comedy and storytelling just blew me away (last year's show was spooky, funny with an A+ twist ending. I still think about it a lot.)
This year he played the ~character of David Attenborough. I spotted him hiding in one of the back rows as we filed into the room (he's too tall to hide anywhere efficiently tbh) and fuckin lost it when he started the show by addressing the audience as subjects of a nature documentary ("and here we see an Edinburgh Fringe audience in their natural habitat...") Attenborough lacked the atmospheric charm of its predecessor but it was still an hour of much powerpoint-aided adventurous fun. I'm sure a lot of the satire went over my head but some of the low-brow jokes put me in stupid fits of giggles -- "Beeb Beeb it's da sound of da police" + Shuttlestock the marmot (named after the large watermark over its picture), who ended up stealing the show (and many of the audiences' hearts, I'm sure). I was tired out after the previous day's five-show-run but seeing Tom do his thing put a joyful spring in my step again.
2. And onto a lower energy form of storytelling with Katy Brand's I Could've Been An Astronaut. It's not classical stand-up in the form of joke-punchline-laugh, Katy points out as she talks about her early childhood and her thwarted ambitions of becoming a space explorer. There's a lot of gentle laughter (from the very middle-aged audience. i felt like a kid), nostalgic anecdotes (involving fax machines), the showing-off of an actual space rock (!) and an unexpected video cameo of Prof Brian Cox's cat (!!!) A thoroughly enjoyable hour.
3. god, I love Max & Ivan, though embarrassingly I still have trouble remembering who is who. They're one of my favourite sketch groups. They were doing a show reprise this year, which was just as well as I never had the chance to catch The Reunion when it was on before; I did, however, watched the Blap it was based on and WOWEE the live show is sooo much better. Their slick choreography has to be seen to be believed, so fucking impressive and so damn funny.
p.s. Max is really fit omg
140817
1715 Bec Hill (Teviot)
1845 Brendon Burns & Craig Quartermaine (Teviot)
2030 Adam Kay (Teviot)
a.k.a. my birthday! and I saw nothing but winners that day.
1. I've been meaning to see Bec Hill live for AGES and I'm so glad I managed to this year because she is such a massive lovable DORK. The first thing she did when she saw me was to compliment my jacket's galaxy print lining, and I was a dumbass who took ages to notice that she was wearing a matching skirt :'D
Her show is basically sorted out into post-it notes and it's up to the audience to yell out what order they want the set to be in. Bec is such an amazingly creative prop comic. Her paper puppet prop thingies are so cool and you can tell a lot of hard work and love has gone into making them. The day's audience are a cool bunch as well, and we manage to get the show into a rather satisfying order.
2. argh it's so hard to put Brendon and Craig's show into words. It was... an experience lol. I knew it was heavily themed on racism (it ain't called Race Off for nothin') but I wasn't prepared for what it had in store for me. Basically Craig was seen eyeing up the queue before the show -- I vaguely recognised him (mainly his voice because of Brendon's podcast) but I don't think everyone else did.. most of them were referring to the show as "the Brendon Burns show" anyway (poor bb craig). I was attempting to avoid eye contact when he approached and offered me a "VIP seat". I got automatically suspicious as hell, much to his amusement. I accepted the offer anyway and got ushered into the venue before everyone else and into a "business class" seat with free orange juice and chocolate bar in tow (win!) Brendon was bouncing around the room like the highly-strung motherfucker he is (I say this affectionately, I swear) while Craig introduced me to Desiree Burch (I am now screaming internally at this point) and they explain the premise of the show + the role I was going to play as one of the only non-white members of the audience.
The show itself was fun! I enjoy Brendon's stand-up a lot, he's got a natural charm whenever he's on stage; I know Craig is much newer to the scene in comparison but holy shit he doesn't look it. Both of them play off each other so fucking well; I didn't know how they were going to work as a double act but I was surprised and delighted and a little bit in love. There's plenty of discussions about race and otherness, mainly contrasting anecdotes between Brendon and Craig as white and indigenous Australian men respectively.
The clincher at the end was that the audience was being recorded, with special emphasis on their reactions to racial jokes in relation to the Non-White people of the audience (sup) -- that is, looking to the "ethnic" people in the room for "approval" despite whatever race is being joked about on stage. A big kudos to the guy who had to sift through that footage, to be fair. Desiree Burch then strolls into play and punches the point home before all of us have an uncomfortable laugh about white guilt.
It's an interesting point to make tbh. I've been attending edfringe shows for years now and the fact that I'm a painfully obvious racial minority + my heightened social anxiety just makes me uncomfortably aware that people treat me differently. Whenever someone white jokes about Chinese / East Asians I instinctively feel like I'm being stared at, get a little panic attack, and force out a laugh just so they know that I'm in no way offended. I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not to have my suspicions confirmed? And I doubt this show would've worked as well in any other environment.
But on a positive note, I got a massive hug from Craig at the end of the show, which was very lovely.
3. ok so I love Adam Kay's edfringe show with all of my heart and soul. Mark Watson recommended it on Twitter last year and fuck, i'm so grateful that i went along to see it. It's him reading his diary entries as a junior doctor interspersed with jaunty medical-themed song parodies (he's a rly wonderful pianist as well). Everything then cascades into the gut-punch of an ending which never fails to make me teary-eyed.
It's also a book now -- This Is Going To Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor, which I've read twice, if you count reading a physical copy + listening to the audiobook as reading it twice. It captures the life of a doctor so accurately -- the constant tiredness and neverending work hours, the job which is some parts laughingly ridiculous and other parts soul-crushingly heartbreaking, all the personal sacrifices we make on the altar of medicine (during my housemanship I have gotten into 3 car accidents as an indirect result of my working hours, once I nearly died; I also missed my grandmother's funeral, two chinese new years, and what feels like half a dozen cousin's weddings. i've also literally moved across an ocean because the ministry of health told me to. but I digress)
*cough* Anyway. I was v happy to see the show a second time. The only thing that could've gone better was if I could have erased my memory of the first time so I could enjoy it all over again. Ah.
130817
1555 Tom Neenan (Underbelly Med Quad)
1820 Katy Brand (Courtyard)
2020 Max and Ivan (Dome)
1. First saw Tom Neenan in 2016, and his lovable combination of character comedy and storytelling just blew me away (last year's show was spooky, funny with an A+ twist ending. I still think about it a lot.)
This year he played the ~character of David Attenborough. I spotted him hiding in one of the back rows as we filed into the room (he's too tall to hide anywhere efficiently tbh) and fuckin lost it when he started the show by addressing the audience as subjects of a nature documentary ("and here we see an Edinburgh Fringe audience in their natural habitat...") Attenborough lacked the atmospheric charm of its predecessor but it was still an hour of much powerpoint-aided adventurous fun. I'm sure a lot of the satire went over my head but some of the low-brow jokes put me in stupid fits of giggles -- "Beeb Beeb it's da sound of da police" + Shuttlestock the marmot (named after the large watermark over its picture), who ended up stealing the show (and many of the audiences' hearts, I'm sure). I was tired out after the previous day's five-show-run but seeing Tom do his thing put a joyful spring in my step again.
2. And onto a lower energy form of storytelling with Katy Brand's I Could've Been An Astronaut. It's not classical stand-up in the form of joke-punchline-laugh, Katy points out as she talks about her early childhood and her thwarted ambitions of becoming a space explorer. There's a lot of gentle laughter (from the very middle-aged audience. i felt like a kid), nostalgic anecdotes (involving fax machines), the showing-off of an actual space rock (!) and an unexpected video cameo of Prof Brian Cox's cat (!!!) A thoroughly enjoyable hour.
3. god, I love Max & Ivan, though embarrassingly I still have trouble remembering who is who. They're one of my favourite sketch groups. They were doing a show reprise this year, which was just as well as I never had the chance to catch The Reunion when it was on before; I did, however, watched the Blap it was based on and WOWEE the live show is sooo much better. Their slick choreography has to be seen to be believed, so fucking impressive and so damn funny.
p.s. Max is really fit omg
140817
1715 Bec Hill (Teviot)
1845 Brendon Burns & Craig Quartermaine (Teviot)
2030 Adam Kay (Teviot)
a.k.a. my birthday! and I saw nothing but winners that day.
1. I've been meaning to see Bec Hill live for AGES and I'm so glad I managed to this year because she is such a massive lovable DORK. The first thing she did when she saw me was to compliment my jacket's galaxy print lining, and I was a dumbass who took ages to notice that she was wearing a matching skirt :'D
Her show is basically sorted out into post-it notes and it's up to the audience to yell out what order they want the set to be in. Bec is such an amazingly creative prop comic. Her paper puppet prop thingies are so cool and you can tell a lot of hard work and love has gone into making them. The day's audience are a cool bunch as well, and we manage to get the show into a rather satisfying order.
2. argh it's so hard to put Brendon and Craig's show into words. It was... an experience lol. I knew it was heavily themed on racism (it ain't called Race Off for nothin') but I wasn't prepared for what it had in store for me. Basically Craig was seen eyeing up the queue before the show -- I vaguely recognised him (mainly his voice because of Brendon's podcast) but I don't think everyone else did.. most of them were referring to the show as "the Brendon Burns show" anyway (poor bb craig). I was attempting to avoid eye contact when he approached and offered me a "VIP seat". I got automatically suspicious as hell, much to his amusement. I accepted the offer anyway and got ushered into the venue before everyone else and into a "business class" seat with free orange juice and chocolate bar in tow (win!) Brendon was bouncing around the room like the highly-strung motherfucker he is (I say this affectionately, I swear) while Craig introduced me to Desiree Burch (I am now screaming internally at this point) and they explain the premise of the show + the role I was going to play as one of the only non-white members of the audience.
The show itself was fun! I enjoy Brendon's stand-up a lot, he's got a natural charm whenever he's on stage; I know Craig is much newer to the scene in comparison but holy shit he doesn't look it. Both of them play off each other so fucking well; I didn't know how they were going to work as a double act but I was surprised and delighted and a little bit in love. There's plenty of discussions about race and otherness, mainly contrasting anecdotes between Brendon and Craig as white and indigenous Australian men respectively.
The clincher at the end was that the audience was being recorded, with special emphasis on their reactions to racial jokes in relation to the Non-White people of the audience (sup) -- that is, looking to the "ethnic" people in the room for "approval" despite whatever race is being joked about on stage. A big kudos to the guy who had to sift through that footage, to be fair. Desiree Burch then strolls into play and punches the point home before all of us have an uncomfortable laugh about white guilt.
It's an interesting point to make tbh. I've been attending edfringe shows for years now and the fact that I'm a painfully obvious racial minority + my heightened social anxiety just makes me uncomfortably aware that people treat me differently. Whenever someone white jokes about Chinese / East Asians I instinctively feel like I'm being stared at, get a little panic attack, and force out a laugh just so they know that I'm in no way offended. I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not to have my suspicions confirmed? And I doubt this show would've worked as well in any other environment.
But on a positive note, I got a massive hug from Craig at the end of the show, which was very lovely.
3. ok so I love Adam Kay's edfringe show with all of my heart and soul. Mark Watson recommended it on Twitter last year and fuck, i'm so grateful that i went along to see it. It's him reading his diary entries as a junior doctor interspersed with jaunty medical-themed song parodies (he's a rly wonderful pianist as well). Everything then cascades into the gut-punch of an ending which never fails to make me teary-eyed.
It's also a book now -- This Is Going To Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor, which I've read twice, if you count reading a physical copy + listening to the audiobook as reading it twice. It captures the life of a doctor so accurately -- the constant tiredness and neverending work hours, the job which is some parts laughingly ridiculous and other parts soul-crushingly heartbreaking, all the personal sacrifices we make on the altar of medicine (during my housemanship I have gotten into 3 car accidents as an indirect result of my working hours, once I nearly died; I also missed my grandmother's funeral, two chinese new years, and what feels like half a dozen cousin's weddings. i've also literally moved across an ocean because the ministry of health told me to. but I digress)
*cough* Anyway. I was v happy to see the show a second time. The only thing that could've gone better was if I could have erased my memory of the first time so I could enjoy it all over again. Ah.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-22 09:55 am (UTC)