Posted By: Richard White, 12 August 2010
Our next Escalator East to Edinburgh blog comes from Tim Clare, who is performing Death Drive, his brutally honest debut stand-up show, drawing, in part, on his award-winning memoir We Can’t All Be Astronauts. It features poetry, ukulele and true stories.
Take it away, Tim!
Tim Clare’s Death Drive – Some Snaps
12 August 2010, 12:30 am
So the talented Wasi Daniju came to my show a few days ago and took some great snaps of my frothing and contorting in the name of art. If you haven’t seen Tim Clare’s Death Drive yet and wonder what on earth goes on in that stuffy oblong room, these images should give you a bit of a clue about what I get up to. The show continues at Zoo Roxy, 7pm, every day until the end of the festival. Word seems to be getting around a bit now – my audiences are growing and growing and I really enjoy doing the show. My tech at the Zoo is one of the nicest, most charming, sanguine motherf*****s I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet, and I think my flierers may be ninja wizards. I was flagging a bit in today’s show, mainly because my breakfast was an entire pint of Ben & Jerry’s. Naughty Tim. Turns out if you binge like a jilted Cookie Monster, it seriously hampers your ability to prance.
In any case, I’m having a splendid time at the Fringe. MusicOMH gave it 4 stars calling it ‘deliciously, darkly funny… An hour in his company simply zips by and many I suspect would have been happy to stay longer, to hear more.’ Effing sweet!
Wo Shi Shi Ren
11 August 2010, 10:00 pm
On Tuesday morning, I grumpily slogged through the driving rain to set up shop on Edinburgh Fringe’s Royal Mile. It took me ages to set up the complicated camping table, and my graphic design skills aren’t up to much, so the sign I drew in black marker on the spot looked a little forlorn.
To be honest, I felt a bit shy. See, the original reason I wanted to do the Poetry Takeaway is because I thought it would be fun. People would come and order poems, then I and an eager cohort of likeminded wordsmiths would knock them out in ten minutes or less. I’ve always really enjoyed doing speed poetry, mainly because it helps me get past that awful fear of the blank page – that positive but often debilitating desire to make every word count.
So I unfolded my cheap camping chairs and laid out my pens and paper and tried to affect a welcoming smile. And… people came. The first two customers were the chaps in the picture above – they were fliering for a show, and they simply wanted a poem about Arnold Schwarzenegger. 10 minutes later, and there they are, gamely posing with said verse. Want to know how they poem went? Well tough, you can’t. It’s an exclusive, a one-off. It’s theirs.
Next was a poem about rubber ducks and Russian dolls, which gave me a golden opportunity to pitch Dean Parkin’s brilliant poetry and storytelling show, Dean’s Dad’s Ducks (do go see it if you get the chance – it wasn’t just funny but properly moving). Soon I had been joined on the stall by a gang of Hammer & Tongue poets, and they made me look like a right pranny by taking to the stall like, well, rubber ducks to water. Dressed in high vis jacket and policeman’s helmet, Pete The Temp steered pedestrians towards the Takeaway, where poets like Ashley French and Michelle Madsen took their orders and set about writing their poems. We served a magician, a street-sweeper, I wrote a poem partly in Mandarin to a customer from China (and in return was taught how to say ‘I am a poet’ in Mandarin – a tricky little sentence that uses all four tonal variations in just four syllables), there was a poem about a dragon, a poem about a skateboarding velociraptor by Mark Grist, we delivered a poem to the Fringe Office after they placed an order, I got photographed with a little girl who is due to start school next week after writing her a poem about all the things she likes at the Fringe, we had a peculiar request for a love poem ‘for Susan’ from a sketchy guy who had his flies undone throughout, we did a street performance of each poem when it was finished, there was laughter, applause, even small squeals of delight… and at some point I realised that I wasn’t grumpy or self-conscious anymore.
I was having fun.
The Poetry Takeaway might be a bit ramshackle, and it might not look like much (yet), but I have to say it was the most fun I’ve had at the Fringe yet. The poets staffing the Takeaway were brilliant, and we got to meet a whole succession of people and have interesting, genuine conversations. It tells you a lot about someone by what sort of poem they ask for, and so in a very short space of time you have a series of weird and wonderful encounters. It kind of feels like how the Fringe should feel, you know?
The Poetry Takeaway returns this Friday the 13th, 11am-6pm, outside the Tron (opposite Starbucks on the bottom end of the Mile). It’s going to be bigger and better, with even more poets. We’re also planning some late-night guerrilla poetry sessions, where the Poetry Takeaway goes out on a delivery run and hits the bars and pubs of the Fringe, sating drunken punters’ hunger for bespoke poems in ten minutes or less. Table service! Look out for us.
Ed Fringe
7 August 2010, 5:24 pm
Wahey! I’m up in Edinburgh for my first ever Fringe run and having a lovely time. There’s mental amounts of stuff to see and thronging crowds and it all feels dreadfully exciting. You get quite publicity jaded pretty quickly, what with the mass of posters screaming at you from every wall and window, and flierers pitching for your patronage, but it’s also very cool to see so much art and comedy and music competing for such large crowds. I did my first preview to an audience containing several friendly faces, and thoroughly enjoyed myself, hopping about and screaming and gesticulating like a little monkey on elastic.
I went to Late N’ Live last night, the notoriously boozy mixed bill stand-up club that runs 1am-5am. I was expecting a bearpit, but actually the crowd were mainly good natured drunkards. I really enjoyed Australian comedian Sammy J’s musical turns. In-between the songs he bashed out on a keyboard, he had really artfully-constructed, wordy, complex bits delivered with precision and high energy. I bellowed heartily. Nice.
Oh, and I’ve stuck some new vids up on youtube. They’re in my vids section but I’ll post them here too so you don’t have to do too much work to see them:
