I was about to perform my comic solo show at the Brighton Fringe but in the run up to the festival I had no sense of humour whatsoever. Fear and dread had gripped me and taken over my mind. “Why am I doing this?” I was asking myself, “Why have I written a one woman show which I now have to perform in a strange city, at a strange venue in front of a lot of muesli munching strangers when I could have been watching Britain’s Got Talent or recapping Game of Thrones in an attempt to understand it?” Of course I’d only be doing my show in front of strangers if I was lucky. My bigger fear was that I would have one shame-faced friend in the audience wondering which words of sympathy to send my way afterwards.
As well as not finding anything remotely funny, I also started to lose my marbles. I found myself searching for my phone when it was in my hand, posting letters into a dustbin and putting the dog basket in the fridge.
My family were the ones to suffer most from this pre show madness. My teenage children helpfully shouting at me not to be so stressed and my husband silently rolling his eyeballs whilst inwardly projecting himself into a different home with a fantasy wife quietly doing the washing up.
Well here I am now, three successful shows later, in a blissful state of calm wondering what all the fuss was about. It turns out the people of Brighton are the loveliest, warmest most up for it bunch I’ve come across since I was last at a festival (Edinburgh, a long time ago). My venue, The Quadrant, was fantastic, my show was very enthusiastically received by full houses and the only person eating muesli was me.
I was advised by the lovely Juice 107.2 Brighton Nights presenter, Boogaloo Stu, to hand out flyers on New Road in an area known as Fringe Central – great advice this. The place was buzzing. There were swarms of friendly theatre goers in this area casually rambling along waiting, hoping to be accosted by flyer flashers. I can’t tell you how relieved I was when the first person I flashed a flyer at smiled back and said: “Oh yes, I’m coming to that” Hooray! So people in Brighton do go to the theatre! They do want to have a laugh and they’re not all bent over big bowls of organic food weighing up the pros and cons of voting Green.
I’ve learnt so much from my Brighton Fringe debut. It’s a great festival with a fantastic atmosphere and was most definitely worth the initial fear of plunging into the unknown. But the most important discovery of all is that performing your own show is an amazing, liberating, empowering and fun experience. So this is what I must remember when the Edinburgh Festival begins to loom and my marbles and family start to reach for the door….
