It's the night before my first show at VAULT Festival.
Stomach is bubbling with trepidation and adrenalin.
The cool thing about doing a comedy show is you are usually 75% knowledgable of your show. The remaining 25% being an anonymous enigma that conjours itself magically out of the shadows on the night of the event itself, being built entirely from the relationship you build with the audience, their reaction to your material and your own sudden spontaneous and fresh reaction to the jokes you've written and the subjects you've prepped to talk about. I know what the material is for tomorrow, but it's delievery and its impact are all up in the air until tomorrow at 5.59pm when I get clearance that NOW is the time to go on stage...
Despite nerves, today has been a positive day. Mainly I have gorged on vegetables and LEMON TEA (according to a 90 year old I met in the pub this is the best way to avoid death) all the while line-learning.
The script has been re-written over and over again in different coloured pencils, the same way I drummed into my head the whole of the Periodic table for GCSE Chemistry back in 2007. Except this time, rather than Transition metals and Noble gasses I am re-writing out facts about 18th century prostitutes, sharks in the UK and my knowledge of the 1968 film Barbarella which my entire show is founded upon.
The show was teched this morning by a wonderful long blonde-haired norwegian called THOR (YES I KNOW - IT IS AMAZING) who was VERY patient with me as I rolled around The Cage at The Vaults like a complete loony practising my final dance in my shark costume. It is so important to have a good supportive team around you when you are doing solo work, so it felt great to know I had such a nice techie to chat to who also loves fantasy ficiton as much as me. GEEKS UNITE!
Anyway, to bed now! I've updated the website finally, so hopefully it looks more professional... lots of new photographs up on my gallery section. Every day I get more obscenely aware that I look like a Pug dog.