Barnstaple, Chesham, short stories

At the weekend I had the pleasure of performing the solo show at Fringe TheatreFest - aka The Barnstaple Fringe. And it was actually a pleasure; I do a lot of fringe festivals and, like everything, some are better than others, but this one was probably my favourite. Obviously you can't compare it to the exhausting joy of Edinburgh with it's thousands of shows, but you wouldn't want to - this festival had 33 production companies (105 performances) over four days, with all of the venues close to each other. As a result, audiences found it easy to watch multiple shows without dashing too far; this coupled with excellent ticket offers (6 shows for £15 etc) and superb marketing from the team of volunteers and you've got yourself a winning festival here. The team behind the event are all so rigorously organised...from a performer's point of view it's an easy one; the venues were well equipped, well-staffed and, most importantly, suitable. I enjoyed three decent nights there, the solo show is really starting to gel now and the reviews (both from the press and audiences - who were invited to pin their reviews on the box office wall) were positive. I'd happily perform shows in Barnstaple every week.

In between performances 1 and 2 in Devon, I made the mad dash up to Chesham to play with the band at Bury Fields Festival. 8 hour roundtrip to play a 25 minute set at a festival? Yep. And it was worth it. Nice festival, packed, enthusiastic audience, and I got to meet/have a good chat with one of my comedy heroes - Mr Alex Horne, who was hosting. Cracking afternoon.

Drove just over a thousand miles this weekend in my tired little Ford Fiesta but I didn't feel tired myself; I felt energised by it all. Amazing what a good weekend can do for your self-esteem...

There seems to be more interest in my projects of late; filmmaker Karen Cann interviewed me and made a lovely video out of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28I_5Bb4y5I

And Hannah from Local Secrets magazine wrote this extensive article about my comedy/drumming stuff: http://mobile.localsecrets.com/ezine.cfm?ezineid=4410

In that article there was a mention of my very new project, All I've Got Is Awkward, which launches on 1st July and will see me release a short story a day for the whole month, all filmed and launched on Vimeo. It's a good way to keep writing, and I've now written all 31 of them, all brand new pieces, secretly quite happy with the way they've turned out. Just need to film them, which may take a bit longer than planned. I'm also editing The Paul Richards Disasters - our four episode sitcom, now all the filming has been done (the final scenes with Abi last week were really strong). I'm also writing a new filmed show (the footage of which has already been shot), and I should find out today if I'm writing a new stage show for somebody else which could possibly end up at the fringe this year (although it's cutting it fine) - more details on those soon. Ah yes, and the second series of Emily & Michael has been launched. Playing four gigs this week (3 with Fred's House, 1 with Claudia), with all this writing/editing I'm really glad I have drums to play.

I was typing last night, about 1am actually so technically the morning, when lots of steam oozed from my laptop. Theatrically this must have looked great - a nice image of a stressed writer and all that, but on a practical level it was a bit of a worry. I turned it off, and hoped I haven't lost all of this footage, words, ideas...to lose all of that really would be a Paul Richards Disaster.