Hi Lo!-bodies,
I am back from the Edinburgh Fringe - and I’m pleased to say it was a good one! I had some very fun shows, some lovely reviews, saw a load of brilliant stuff, and only lost a handful of my marbles a handful of times. Now I’m back in the Big Smoke there is a distinct back-to-school, end-of-summer/-the world aroma in the air. London is dusty, everyone is walking around looking vaguely poached, and I caught myself in a mirror just now and found a creased, bearded Old Testament desert scribe looking back at me, like a thatched sun-dried tomato. It’s fair to say it was a busy, wearing August.
But rather than lying face down in a sensory deprivation tank* for a month, I am firing up my Network Railcard and taking my Fringe show The Cut on tour around the UK. It’s my second ever tour! And it looks like this…
SEPT 21st - BRIGHTON - Komedia - TICKETS
SEPT 22nd - LEEDS - Hyde Park Book Club - TICKETS
SEPT 23rd - MANCHESTER - XS Malarkey - TICKETS
SEPT 28th - GLASGOW - Old Hairdressers - TICKETS
OCT 5th - OXFORD - Library Bar - TICKETS
OCT 10th - BATH - Jesters Comedy Club - TICKETS
OCT 11th - BRISTOL - Alma Tavern - TICKETS
OCT 19th - EDINBURGH - Monkey Barrel Comedy Club - TICKETS
OCT 28th - CARDIFF - Roasted Comedy Club - TICKETS
NOV 8th - CAMBRIDGE - Cambridge Junction - TICKETS
There you have it! A new Cardiff date for the Welsh folks, and there will be some London dates incoming very, very soon, I promise! In the meantime, if you’re in any of those cities - grab a ticket! It’s three weeks until we kick off in Brighton, so there’s no better time to lock yourself in**.
To be clear, this image doesn’t have the Cardiff date on it. But if you click the image, you’ll find the tickets for that too!
*side-note: if we’re being pedantic, don’t all tanks, in a general sense, deprive you of your senses? By killing you, I mean?
** n.b. locked in to the performance. Do not lock yourself in your house, thus making it logistically improbable for you to see the show, or indeed, anything.
It’s very embarrassing to be proved wrong about things, isn’t it?
Readers of this newsletter will remember I posted an anxious screed about going up to the Fringe before I set off in late July. I’ve spent a lot of the last 6 years being vehemently, outspokenly anti-Fringe for various reasons which include (but are not limited to): the infamously rectum-scrunching expense, the festival’s painful inability to meaningfully include folks from across the gamut of class/race/gender, the narrow bottleneck-ing of comedy culture into one specific type of zeitgeist-y show, the cliques, my bitterness at not being part of the cliques, and, at the base of it all, a deep fear that, in amongst all those shows, awards, conversations, feuds, facades and buzz, I will get lost and, in some sense, fail.
Despite all this, I decided to go this year, with the sort of show I thought would make sense at the Fringe (even with a scrunched rectum). I was prepared to feel alienated and weird, disappointed, scammed. In the lead-up to the Festival, the Fringe Society announced that after their previous sponsor TikTok (!?) had pulled out, their new sponsor was a creative AI company (!!??) - a strategy that feels like removing your new-born baby from the gaping jaws of a Great White shark and drop-kicking it into the event horizon of a Black Hole. The omens were pretty bleak.
And then something marvelous happened. I had a nice time.
Don’t get me wrong, all of the problems listed above were still present, and, if anything, more prevalent than ever. There were also lonely moments, dissociative shows, and the inevitable moment watching someone you just handed a flyer of your face to take it and put it straight in a bin. But either because I’m older, or more care-free, less hell-bent on the random fruit machine of the festival being an arbiter of my personal success - I was able to find a significant amount of joy in it all. It helped that my show garnered some good press. But equally around me, acts I love, and who are doing different, curious, interesting things also seemed to be getting their flowers - shows like David Elms Describes A Room (a beautiful, playful piece of improv), Sami Abu Wardeh (a Palestinian act who has made a truly miraculous show about revolution and homecoming), and Sam Nicoresti who won the main award after years of making incredible, thoughtful work across a panoply of different genres.
In the end, whilst there is so much to fix up there, it is hard not to be in thrall to the project: getting that many people in one place for that long to be entertained and to entertain. As the world falls to pieces like wet toilet paper, it becomes harder and harder to do mad things like fill an entire Scottish city on a hill with clowns, for no other reason than that it’s fun. But the bottom line is that, in the face of fire and fascism and phalanxes of inane, shitsplat AI chatbots - people will always make things. You can’t stop them. I’m excited to make more.
Feeling generous?
If you’ve got anything spare, please consider giving to one of these Palestinian charities…
Medical Aid for Palestinians - if you haven’t already donated to this (or another Palestinian charity) now is the time! What is going in Gaza is absolutely indefensible - and was completely avoidable, a man-made atrocity. We all have a moral obligation to do anything we can - the very least is sharing the message, but if you can, please donate!
All Our Relations - I heard about this charity from comedian Jen Brister who has been incredibly restlessly bringing this charity to many people’s attention - they are doing exceptional work in caring for displaced Gazan families. Please give if you can!
If you have a charity close to your heart, however big or small, and want to include it here {or you wanna get in touch for whatever reason!} - just send us an email benpope86@gmail.com