Small Talk

I never really get into office small talk, I don't have the knack for it. In my more misanthropic moods I'd say I didn't have enough missing brain cells to get into "water cooler talk". But really, I feel like I rarely have anything particularly interesting to contribute. I'm not in the habit of discussing my personal life and the most interesting non-personal part of my life in this blog and my videos. And I really don't want people I work with knowing about this.

But tomorrow morning, I'll actually have something interesting to respond with when people ask "what did you do on the weekend?" Last night, I got to see four world premiere performances. It isn't often I get to use that sentence. I previously mentioned my college friend Adrian Calear directs quite a bit these days, comedy in particular. I bumped into him at this year's Melbourne Comedy Festival where he was directing a show call "I Heart Racism". Now he's directing four shows at the impending Melbourne Fringe Festival.

Anybody who has done live performance will know that after rehearsing a show for while, you start to lose any objectivity and you have trouble seeing what "works" about the show and what doesn't. This was the stage the performers Adrian is directing had reached, so he organised a night for them to perform live to a small audience and I was lucky enough to score an invite. It was a full night - four shows each about an hour long. One was a two-person drama, one I would call a fairly traditional standup show and the other two were one-man comedy shows although not really standup.

I'm angry at myself for not picking up flyers for the shows so I could tell you a few more details about them and give them some promotion. That might be a moot point because although I enjoy quite a few readers these days, I have a funny feeling none of them are in Melbourne. The internets are a funny place.

Adrian has promised to come along to my performance at the open mic night on Tuesday so I'll get some flyers from him then. And for anyone actually in Melbourne while the Fringe Festival is happening, I'll have four very strong recommendations for you.