For a long time now I’ve had the feeling that something wasn’t right. It’s weird how life pushes and pulls things into different perspectives, often I’ve found when my personal life is least settled my professional life is an oasis of calm and visa versa. At the moment I find myself in a good place personally, a healthy relationship and I’m really happy, yet professionally I have something burning inside me and I’m not sure what it is. Let’s be honest no-one dreams of working in marketing, I certainly didn’t, I dreamt of writing plays and directing when I was younger. So as this feeling increases I feel obliged to try and suss it out, and maybe I won’t, but I have the fear that if I don’t then I’ll feel regret later on.
To that end I’m working on a couple of projects, the first is a play, a monologue which I have written and will direct at Unity Theatre in May which feels a safe and exciting thing to do. Will it open doors? Will it offer new opportunities? I have no idea. The second is to write and perform some stand up. I’ve been entranced by stand up for years now but have never had the guts to do anything about me, and as my friend Tim reminds me, it’s in danger of becoming something you only ever talk about, like the unfinished novel or the gym membership.
I’d written 5 pages of material, it’s folksy whistful storytelling stuff rather than punchlines but it seemed to be going okay, until I decided this evening to record some.. Turns out I’d written 15 mins of, well, shit. It was awful, but really interesting from my point of view. Turns out I sound a lot different to how I imagined, there is also some good material buried in there it’s just obscured by excessively overwritten crap and at some points alliteration.
Playwrights talk about finding their voice, the unique defining sound that is “them”. I’ve got closer with my writing but with comedy it’s weird hearing what my delivery and intonation are like, completely different to how I imagined.
So what now. Well I have a 16 min recording of draft one, the next stage is to rewrite and rerecord, see if I can get a serviceable 10 mins to start with. I’ll try and keep putting updates on here and occasionally even try popping a recording on. If anyone knows of any open slots that are friendly, or would like to hear my material, drop me a message in the box below, from draft one I need all the help I can get.
Cheers and goodnight.