But I barely had time to get over my jet lag before I was back in the office for the start of Series 3 of Modern Life Is Goodish. It's the early part of production: all about corralling my thoughts and looking for connections between things.
The start of a process that will generate 8 hours of new material is also the point at which I have to put myself and my new ideas in front of some audiences - because it's only when it's in front of an audience that you really find out whether it connects or not.
And that means it's time for my monthly night - Dave Gorman's Screen Guild - to return. With regular one man and a mic stand-up, it's easy to try out new ideas because there are loads of clubs that can accommodate a guest popping in for a 5 or 10 minute spot. But my double act partner - a 9 foot by 12 foot screen - doesn't really fit in most clubs. And even when it can fit, it doesn't, y'know, fit ... because it has to take over the stage for the whole night and having a big screen getting in everyone else's way so that I can do 5 minutes with it in the middle of the night is just a bit weird and disruptive.
So instead, once a month I do 30 to 40 minutes of stuff in between some guests (that I know will be brilliant because I choose them) and that solves the riddle. As well as giving me a fierce deadline to keep me working on things.
We've done three seasons of it so far and it's been the most enormously helpful way of building material for the two tour shows and fourteen episodes of TV that have been created since I started them.
We've only been able to set up the first show of this fourth season as yet - but others will be following on a roughly monthly basis. The first one is going to be on March 14th at The Proud Archivist in Haggerstone.
As well as my monthly club night, as the recordings get closer, I always need to do dry runs of the shows that will eventually become the complete episodes. I do them in blocks of three and do rough run throughs of two shows each night because, well, because we record them two at a time too.
The dry runs are all set up for block 1:
| APRIL 26, 2015
SUNDAY |
COLCHESTER ARTS CENTRE | SCREEN BUILD: Two rough and ready one man shows. | get tickets |
| APRIL 28, 2015
TUESDAY |
FAREHAM, ASHCROFT ARTS CENTRE | SCREEN BUILD: Two rough and ready one man shows. | get tickets |
| MAY 1, 2015
FRIDAY |
BARKING: THE BROADWAY | SCREEN BUILD: Two rough and ready one man shows. | get tickets |
... and block 2:
| MAY 24, 2015
SUNDAY |
TRING: THE COURT THEATRE | SCREEN BUILD: Two rough and ready one man shows. | get tickets |
| MAY 26, 2015
TUESDAY |
CAMBRIDGE, THE JUNCTION | SCREEN BUILD: Two rough and ready one man shows. | get tickets |
| MAY 29, 2015
FRIDAY |
ALDERSHOT: WEST END CENTRE | SCREEN BUILD: Two rough and ready one man shows. | get tickets |
... and block 3:
| JUNE 21, 2015
SUNDAY JUNE 23, 2015 TUESDAY JUNE 25 2015 FRIDAY |
NEWBURY: NEW GREENHAM ARTS | SCREEN BUILD: Two rough and ready one man shows. | Tickets go on sale March 11th |
... and block 4:
| JULY 19, 2015
SUNDAY JULY 21, 2015 TUESDAY JULY 24 2015 FRIDAY |
MAIDENHEAD: NORDEN FARM | SCREEN BUILD: Two rough and ready one man shows. | get tickets |
They are, by necessity, within a certain distance of home - because the whole point of these shows is that in between, I do rewrites etc - and I can't remake a 700 slide powerpoint presentation while making a 5 hour journey to a venue.
But that's what touring is for. And the tour - Dave Gorman Gets Straight To The Point* (*The Powerpoint) - has been extended with 39 more dates in the autumn.
Details for this - and all these warm ups - can be found on the Live Dates page of my site.
1 comment:
Thank you, you've just made me day! I am slightly less angry that everyone else is banging on about a dress
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