Hey everyone,
I hope you are all well. It has been a while since I have written properly, so apologies.
Key reason being I have been insanely busy!
To summarise November in a few bullet points...
My diet has mainly consisted of coffee, almond croissants... and well... berocca.
Music has consisted of Fat White Family, Aesop Rock and Taylor Swift on repeat (OH MY GOD HER ALBUM IS SO GOOD).
Tasks have included moving house to OVAL, writing articles, love letters, comedy routines, plays and short films, gigging around the UK, teaching Ping-Pong, tutoring GCSE English, making a Shark costume and choreographing a new burlesque routine...
Comedy highlights included compering Secret Forum’s Sunday Papers Live at the end of the month in Camden and performing three ramshackle Work-In-Progress showings of my new show Being Barbarella at the Etcetera Theatre. I learnt more about comedy in those three nights than I have in the latter half of this year and it felt incredible!
I was thrilled to learn at the beginning of the month I won an Ideastap Brief to have a weekend of writing mentoring with the incredibly well-respected Laurence Marks, writer of British sitcoms such as Birds of Feather, The New Statesman and Goodnight Sweetheart. His advice was invaluable to my development as a writer and it has proved very useful in the development of my new sitcom-esque stage play Duck Flu - which you can read more about at the bottom of this blog...
Add on top of all this my love of dancing with friends until the early hours and my recent addiction to my local gym which is OPEN 24 HOURS EVERY DAY - it is fair to summarise that I have NOT SLEPT AT ALL and am VERY TIRED. But goodness it feels so wonderful to be busy, and my abs are on fire.
Oh yeah, and I also went to LA for four days.....
Thus, for all of you who have been asking ‘What are you up to at the moment?”, here is a brief summary of my projects that I would love for you to come and support when you are not tooooo busy....
The Secret Comedians on the 17th December
It is the last Secret Comedians of the year at Paper Dress Vintage and I have been working hard to make sure it goes off with a bang. The line-up is, as always, stellar, so grab your santa-hats and best vintage Christmas jumpers and come to the Shoreditch boutique for our final evening of eccentricity in 2014!
Line up includes George Rowe, Joz Norris, Caroline Mabey, Lou Sanders, Joey Page and David Mills. M.Cd by me. Duh.
Being Barbarella - VAULT Festival & the Adelaide Fringe
So, just encase you didn't know, I won the Ideastap Brief to have my new show Being Barbarella performed for one week at the Vaults, Waterloo, as part of VAULT Festival in February 2015.
The programme for the festival is bloody incredible - keep your eyes peeled for Yve Blake, my new girl-crush, with her show Lie Collector and new play Skint by Rosie Kellet.
I am still in complete awe of the f*cking amazing design D*Dreg created for me for the show *check above* - do look at all his other illustrations online too. He's super talented.
Being Barbarella is turning into one of my proudest achievements to date and I am looking forward to seeing its development throughout 2015 as I perform it more and more. It is a honest and blunt stand-up comedy show which explores my current fixation with sexuality in current society with surreal focus on subjects I love such as prostitituion and sharks.
The show will be performed five times from the 4th of February until the 7th at 6pm, (2.30pm matinee on the 7th) at The Cage. Click her for tickets!
After that, I fly away to Adealide for the entire month to perform the show 15 times (!!!!) at The Producers as part of the Adelaide Fringe. To say I am excited is an understatement.
Cast as ‘Jilian’ in ‘Take Two’ Feature film written by Ashkan Kooshanejad and Negar Shaghaghi
I was touched to receive an email from Ashkan Kooshanejad (well respected music producer and winner of the Francois Chalais Award at the Cannes Film Festival for ‘No One Knows About Persian Cats’) enquiring about whether I would be interested in starring in his and Negar Shaghaghi’s new feature length art-house film ‘Take Two’. He found me via my Instagram and was keen for my ‘look’ to be in the film. The cast is incredibly dynamic and the script is one of the most visually exciting things I’ve read in a while. I’ll be playing the part of 'Jilian’. We finish shooting in January 2015. The film is mainly being shot in Hackney and explores some pretty dark themes such as suidcide, death and resurrection. Keep your eyes peeled for more info! Here’s a sneak peek pic of our first rehearsal....
Duck Flu - Black Box Festival
"It starts with a sneeze… then a cough… then a quack… "
The script which won me the brief to be mentored by Laurence Marks is also the script which has won OddFlock and I a four-night run at the Etcetera Theatre in January as part of the Black Box Festival.
It is called ‘Duck Flu’ and is a 50 minute play or ‘pilot episode’ following the lives of two siblings who are surviving an apocolypse in rural England. The play will be performed from the 15th to the 18th of January at 9.30pm at the Etcetera Theatre. The plan is to perform it in January before developing it further and taking it to the Edinburgh Festival in August 2015.
Here’s the blurb if you are interested....
The year is 2017. The Vegans have taken over and Duck Flu has infected the nation. Whilst giant human-bird zombies terrorise the home counties, twin sisters Anna and Berry try to remain on the right side of sane whilst trapped in their family house with nothing but each other, their mother, E.R and a machete for entertainment…. But when Ollie, a real human man from the outside world seeks solace in their home, everything starts to change….
"Duck Flu was Pitch-perfect in every aspect. The writing was seamless, dropping us into this post-apocalyptic world where everyone fears infection and the only way to stave off the disease is to drink tea. In most plays like this, a lack of an exposition would have been a hindrance but Lyons executed the piece perfectly. For me, this was the runaway hit of the night" - InterMission Magazine
*************
So there you have it... all the busy little projects I've been doing! I'll be posting more info about all the other projects I have organised soon so do click here again before the end of the year.
If you want to come and support me and see any of my shows, do come and check out my gig list which I update regularly!
Lots of love,
Elf xxx