{"id":7984,"date":"2003-11-04T21:59:00","date_gmt":"2003-11-04T08:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=7984"},"modified":"2024-03-13T22:19:09","modified_gmt":"2024-03-13T09:19:09","slug":"morgueatlarge-that-festival-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=7984","title":{"rendered":"[morgueatlarge] That Festival Report"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent November 2003]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three months of very severe busy. Here’s some short-form updates:
* we did the festival
* we had many visitors, including Lucy and John, Kirsten, Leon and Matt E
* I supervised the steady expansion of a bookshop-based roleplaying club
* I scored a freelance web content development contract for really quite stupid money
* Cal got a big exciting job
* we travelled through England
* lots and lots of other stuff<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve been just about bouncing off the walls this past week, desperate to get some time to catch up on all the things I need to catch up on, including this. And now the time has arrived – Matt has been kicked ou^H^H^H sadly left us, and I can stay late at work and tap out this email. Smoove.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I believe I promised a Festival report. Here goes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—–<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FEST<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Edinburgh Festival is, as we like to say back home, world famous in New Zealand. It\u2019s a big deal if a Kiwi act makes it to the festival, and even bigger if they actually do well. I was waiting for the Festival from the moment I decided to stick around in Edinburgh, determined to see every damn thing I could manage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s actually a bunch of festivals all running simultaneously. Wellingtonians, imagine the Jazz Festival, the Film Festival, the Festival of the Arts and the Fringe all at once and you\u2019re getting the idea. The bulk of the fest is the Fringe – which operates according to the \u2018you bring it, we\u2019ll list it\u2019 system of welcoming all comers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The real competition in the Fringe is for venues. The big venues, such as the Gilded Balloon and the Assembly Rooms, are able to pick and choose the best of the best, and they release their own Festival brochures featuring their own acts. Their reputations are sound indeed. A lot of other people come to the Festival with shows to put on, and every conceivable venue is used. There were something like 200 different venues for the Festival. The competition means the venues cost a fair chunk of cash, and that comes through in the ticket prices – the Festival this year was filled with lamentations for the lost days of yore when tickets were \u00a33 and innovative risky shows weren\u2019t put off coming by the cost of the venue. This led to a rival festival down the road in the cheaper confines of Leith, a \u2018people\u2019s festival\u2019 where the tickets weren\u2019t extortionate and the bars weren\u2019t full of pissed London-based comedians. An interesting situation and you can probably tell I\u2019m about to start ranting about my point of view on it all, but I know you\u2019re not bloody interested in that lot, so I\u2019ll skip to the good stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Weds July 30 Caroline and I had a pre-Festival warm-up with \u2018Jeremy Hardy vs the Israeli Army\u2019, a documentary following a London-based comedian who went to Palestine with the International Solidarity Movement. Harrowing stuff, and the filmmaker was on hand to talk about the film afterwards. It was a good document of the ISM\u2019s people and processes, which served as a good counterpoint to some of the hysterical propaganda that circulated about them following the deaths of ISM activists Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall. Sobering, but enlightening and ultimately a rewarding experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was to be a very political Festival. Many performances were commenting on the Middle East situation, almost without exception being very critical of the Bush administration and the UK\u2019s role in what is seen over here as \u2018Bush\u2019s war\u2019. Perhaps the strangest outcome was the infamous Comedy Terrorist, Aaron Barschak, desperately trying to wring a show out of the time he crashed a royal birthday party dressed as Osama. (Now *that* frenzy was something to be seen.) He was ignored by audiences, although every outlet reviewed the show, and the consensus was \u2018terrible, you have to feel sorry for him\u2019. It was an odd direction for the often-scornful media to throw some sympathy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t go and see Aaron Barschak. I relate this story here simply because the 2003 festival will be remembered for him; and because one of the newspaper profiles revealed his co-conspirator, the Colonel Tom Parker to his Elvis: none other than New Zealand\u2019s own \u201ccomedy genius\u201d, Brendhan Lovegrove. (I apologise if anyone reading this is a friend of Brendhan, or a fan, but seriously, the guy never gave me anything other than vague bodily discomfort.) So there\u2019s a Kiwi connection you won\u2019t read about on http:\/\/www.nzedge.com\/<\/a>!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway. Politics out of the way, we kicked off our Festival with the very funny Wicker Woman on July 31, which I picked because I love \u2018The Wicker Man\u2019 and, well, why not give it a shot? It turned out to be a fortuitous selection, as these reviews make clear: http:\/\/www.population3.co.uk\/reviews.shtml<\/a>. A damn good show, although it never did hit it big.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You might wonder how it is that a show like this, with such excellent reviews, could fail to succeed? Simply put, the competition is intense. There is so much happening so fast that it\u2019s hard for cream to rise to the
top. But Population 3 will not be forgotten – sometimes it takes a year or two to build up the word of mouth. Case in point: Flight of the Conchords.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kiwiland\u2019s folktastic duo were the underground rumble at last year\u2019s fringe, the show the comedians wanted to see. This year, they came in with no publicity machine, a show they\u2019d cobbled together at the last minute, and a good rep with the right people. I knew they were out there, but I wasn\u2019t interested in seeing them. I can see those guys anytime back home. Any time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead we welcomed August with \u2018Homage to Louis\u2019 from the Jazz and Blues Fest. The venue wasn\u2019t what I was hoping for – it had all the ambience of an old folk\u2019s home, and the audience was mostly grey. But quite frankly I didn\u2019t care. It was a great show, covering Louis Armstrong\u2019s whole career, with a lot of emphasis on some of his wilder early material. I\u2019ve never seen any appeal in tribute acts, but this one worked for me, even the lead singer doing his best Satchmo scratchy voice for the vocals. Brilliant stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We followed with a bit of stand-up, the Cream of Irish Comedy. Cue joke about how the cream has curdled, or whatever. I have never seen a comedian die as thoroughly as the last guy here did. Yikes. NOT FUNNY.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sunday. We zoomed into town in time for Dark Earth, one of the big events of the theatre programme, a shadowy portrayal of Glasgow urbanites coming across a family scrabbling a living in the Scottish borders. I liked it a lot, although the ending crossed over into an unappealing hysteria (theatre seems to do this a lot – it has its big emotional scream-and-shout finales without really justifying the emotions on display). It\u2019s been criticised for being too allegorical, or for cramming too much social commentary in, but that didn\u2019t bother me in the slightest. I got a lot out of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We spilled out into the daylight and rounded the corner in time to enjoy the Cavalcade that was the proper opening of the festival. Float after float after float, most of them advertising some show or other, all led by the massed ranks of the Edinburgh Military Tattoo\u2019s marching bands. Phenomenal fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then back around the corner to catch some physical theatre from the University of Nevada Las Vegas. It was called The Human Show, and after watching it we scored free tickets to Joe: The Infinite Universe immediately following. Physical theatre\u2019s not my thing and my appreciation for dance doesn\u2019t go much beyond the level of \u2018hey, that\u2019s cool\u2019, but it was a nice afternoon\u2019s entertainment.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I enjoyed Joe a lot. I\u2019m not even gonna try and describe it. There were bodies, they moved, there was lighting, there was sound, there was a science lecture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then we cannoned across-town to the Underbelly for The Mighty Dread, a piece of hip-hop theatre about a south London rapper who can\u2019t be emotionally honest to his girl and loses her – and then challenges Love itself to a verbal showdown. That was the hook that grabbed me – verbal sparring with an anthro\u2019d Love sounded wild, and since it hadn\u2019t been too long ago that 8 Mile had mainstreamed battle rhyming I was counting on some good stuff. It turned out I liked pretty much everything *except* the battle – after an hour of build up it amounted to three brief stanzas: \u2018love sucks\u2019\/\u2019no it doesn\u2019t, chill out\u2019\/\u2019oh, okay then\u2019 which was a sad anticlimax. I\u2019d wanted a roaring swirling philosophical debate cat-and-mouse wordwar and I just didn\u2019t get it. Still, they\u2019re a young company and I enjoyed the show, so I\u2019m not going to bitch any longer. At least they had some non-white faces on stage, anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The night was to end with Live Ghost Hunt, a mock-doc \u2018let\u2019s find some ghosts in this very building\u2019 piece of broad comedy. It was nice and occasionally innovative but quite mild, really – I think it would have worked better with a pint or two fizzing up my brain. Still, made me jump when they sprang the ghost on us, which was at least part of the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that was that. We trundled off home, collapsed and slept. It was the end of Sunday 3 August.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Only 25 more days of festival!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MORE TO COME…
———<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have about 2 weeks until our next visitor turns up, so I’ll try and be disciplined and get all caught up by then…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wish me luck!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Morgan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent November 2003] Three months of very severe busy. Here’s some short-form updates:* we did the festival* we had many visitors, including Lucy and John, Kirsten, Leon and Matt E* I supervised the steady expansion of a bookshop-based roleplaying club* I scored a freelance web content development contract … Continue reading [morgueatlarge] That Festival Report<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[199],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-morgueatlarge"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-24M","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7984"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7985,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7984\/revisions\/7985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}