Author: Sam Freeman
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Review: DV8: John
My sister bought me tickets to see DV8 at the Playhouse as a thank you present. I have to confess I’m not usually a fan of physical theatre, but they’ve an international reputation for creating amazing work so I pushed my prejudices aside and sat in the stalls for 75 minutes of, well, I didn’t…
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A gig in Leeds to mostly silence
I’ve just got back from Leeds and, sat in bed, suddenly don’t feel at all tired so I thought I’d write a quick post (as it’s been a while..). It was an interesting gig tonight, I’d done it before about 8 months previously and it’d been great, noisy, friendly and with a slight edge –…
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Frauds, Hipsters and the word C**t
There were three things that Charlene despised. The first were frauds, the seemingly never ending line of people pretending to be something they were not, doing things they hadn’t, telling her about achieving things they either exaggerated or, more often than not, had never actually happened. The second was hipsters, including (but not exhaustively) bearded…
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Seeing the trees
“Sometimes you can’t see the wood for the trees” As my last blog post probably hinted at I’ve had a somewhat galling month or so. A couple of bits I can’t go into detail about on here (although I will later this week) and then some bits I can – mostly the stand up and…
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Comedy deaths, Man Utd and the pit of despair.
I’ve found that recently I’ve become, metaphorically, in my comedy career, Man Utd. It was all going so well a few months back, I was in a weird comedy zone where everything just seemed to work and was easy, I didn’t feel under pressure at gigs and was performing and felt really happy on stage.…
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Edinburgh 2014
This is my fourth year of coming up to Edinburgh and seeing shows and I’ve got in the habit of popping up little reviews and reporting on my time up here. It’s been a weird one, firstly I’m more a performer than in the past (although still just doing 2 shows) and secondly my taste…
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What I’m working on…
Its been a while since I updated people on what I’m working on so I thought that as I’d finally sorted out my site I’d add an extra blog post too! It’s been a while since I wrote new stand up as I’ve been working on Gaffer, the football play about homophobia which will now…
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The life formerly known as Sam Freeman’s.
Life has had a change for me in the last couple of months. Firstly I’ve finished directing a show and have returned to my relative normality going out every few evenings to do a gig or two and returning at 1am either bitter and angry that I didn’t do very well or bitter and angry…
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“Gaffer” – 9/10 Liverpool Sound & Vision
Life’s a pitch for a good manager, in the testosterone filled world of football, there is the hard work but also the banter, the great times of winning a trophy or two, of the desperate times in which a club can come so close to extinction that it threatens a whole community, it can destabilise…
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“Gaffer” – Madeup.lv
Football; international bajillion-dollar industry to be sure, but one not exactly known for its tolerance of diversity (insert undergraduate thesis here). This is explored in the touching drama Gaffer, which runs all this week at the Unity Theatre. Produced by the Unity with Lives Of Others Theatre in association with Homotopia and Everton in the…
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“Gaffer” – Liverpool Echo ****
The beautiful game, it seems, has an ugly side – and not just one that leaves teeth marks. Writer Chris Chibnall, the former Formby schoolboy behind everything from Broadchurch to Born and Bred, penned his bitter-sweet footballing drama Gaffer more than a decade ago. And yet, dispiritingly, little appears to have changed, when it comes…
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“Gaffer” – The Public Reviews ****
Gaffer is an impressive act of performance with all twenty parts being played by just one actor. He carries a play that recreates the triumphs and disasters of life on the pitch and a narrative that moves the central character from early middle age back to being 15 years old. The weight of all of these…
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Tech rehearsals
It’s Monday at 5:40 and I’m currently sat in the back of the theatre as preparations for Gaffer happen all around me. The two week rehearsal process has flown by and I have a slight dizzy excitement about the next few days and the opening night. It’s been a pretty intense process for me (and…
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The TEN types of open acts…
I wanted to share my views on the different types of people I’ve experienced as an open act doing comedy this past year and a half… This is just my personal experience, so please don’t be offended if yours has not been the same. So here goes, STRAP IN. The dedicated dreamer who’s taken a…
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Feeling Mello.
I’m currently sat in Love Crumbs, (find it here…) a delightful cake shop in Edinburgh before toddling off to a wedding so, with 45 mins to kill, I thought I’d get some diabetes, caffeine and write a blog post.
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Icy beer, brain freeze and the problem with being tired..
It’s been a hard day. Sometimes they just are. That’s not to say it hasn’t been fun, quite the contrary, i’m directing at the moment and loving every moment of it, but today, in a stickily hot rehearsal room with melted chocolate biscuits fighting the tiredness that’s been threatening to engulf me I have to…
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Post-match: Eng V Ita
This is, it should be said, a conflicted World Cup for me. I am massively excited to see the games, the attacking prowess on show and the top players battling for dominance. After the Spain Netherlands game my appetite was whetted, a clash of the titan’s – total possession football being taken apart by counter attacking at…
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Gaffer Rehearsals – Day 1
So, here we are, day one. There’s always mixed feelings starting a rehearsal process – fear, panic and excitement mix together in a heady mix that can, on occasion, be overwhelming. We, however, cheated a little. Today is day one, but we did a couple of days pre-rehearsals in in a desolate part of East…