The February new material evening

Our second new material session of the year took place last night at CB2, another chance to try out some stuff, invite a few guest acts, and generally get a bit nervous in front of people I really like. Gave two pieces a run out - one of them was a dramatically re-written version of a play I wrote originally five years ago called, 'Jason's Last Night Out In Town' which was performed at the Bury Fringe back then in front of about six people. It didn't work then in my opinion for many reasons, but I've been keen for a while to rework it as I've always been of the feeling the plotline works a treat and it just needed knocking in a slightly more comedic direction. It tells the story of a garage mechanic called Jason, who falls in love with a beautiful girl called Jennifer who is a massive Ben Folds Five fan. Although she treats him badly, he soon realises that by telling girls you're a Ben Folds Five admirer they are attracted to you - so he follows the band on tour, pulling random girls all over the world. However, when the band split, his sex life is over...but now, the band have reformed and Jennifer returns out of the blue. I'm quite happy with it now, but it's very, very nerdy on the Ben Folds quotes, and I must remember not everyone is as into it as I am. I played Jason last night, Hind played Jennifer, Paul Malpas played the other man in the garage, and in a slightly strange bit of casting Izzy played my best friend, 'Dean'. It went down well with the audience of 15 or so, but it still needs a further rewrite - after a while, when do you just let things go and move on? We also tried out episode one of the new Oscar Pike YouTube sitcom - 'The Oscar Pike Diaries.' I wrote six episodes last year to be filmed, but after the Edinburgh run of the second Oscar show we just got a bit bored of the character (I've written a very rough first draft of a third Oscar show, 'The Inevitable Demise Of Oscar Pike' but that will never see the light of day) - but on looking back at the scripts of the unseen Oscar sitcom I started to realise how proud I was of this material....I was in a good place last January, I think, these scripts are bright and optimistic. The episode we tried last night, 'Crush' is very typical of the character - I fall in love with Clare, my housemate, get frustrated when she starts dating a confident hunk called Jonny, take some bad advice from a random lady on a park bench, go to make my move anyway and end up accidentally losing my accommodation and living in my car. I obviously took the role of Oscar, Izzy played Clare, Paul M played Jonny and Hind was the old lady - Hind is brilliant at playing older characters (as we discovered in the Christmas show) despite only being 25. I'm under no illusions that, apart from a handful of people who seem to ask me most weeks about a third production, that there is a genuine demand for more Oscar, but I felt so good being back in that character again last night and the audience responded incredibly positively. Once we've got the 'Embarrassment Of Richards' YouTube sitcom (being filmed live on 10, 17 and 24 March), the podcast sitcom  - 'Technically Single' (April) and UK tour of 'Some Plays By Paul Richards' (April) out of the way I'll get this filmed, finally, before we hit the fringe with 'Redundancy Club', which I should probably finish writing at some point. Alongside our stuff last night we had our guests - Jessica and Richard put on an excellent, excellent short film they've made, and lovely band Folkwitch played at the end. Great to see friends make it over - in particular Julia, Georgia, Rhian, Roisin and Andy. My flies were undone for all of the Oscar Pike performance - Julia was the only person who noticed but assumed it was part of the character. It wasn't, I felt a bit awkward when realising this. These sessions are great for me as a writer to keep on bashing out stuff to see what sticks, not a vintage evening, but not a bad night at all.