Ken Campbell: Lighthouse

Sometimes people come up to me after a show to tell me that they can see the influence of Ken Campbell in my performance, even in an interrogative nasal twang that inflects my voice.

I used to mention Ken in the press blurb to my last show, ‘The Human Loire’. It was a somewhat crass attempt to give myself some professional back-story, to ride some famous coat-tails, given that no one has heard of me. (I should never have supposed that being ‘known’ was a meaningful attribute in its own right.) One listings website mis-read the blurb and stated that the show was ‘directed by Ken Campbell’. I didn’t write in to correct them.

When thinking up stuff and how to perform it, I always keep Ken in mind. He is the most discerning critic of what’s boring, half-hearted, lazy and self-indulgent. His role is a symbolic one; like Socrates’ daimonion, he tells me what to avoid rather than what to do. What would his opinion really be of my performances? I shudder to think.

Ken was known to get furious if you wasted his time on anything that wasn’t astonishing and fascinating. I was (fortunately?) not on the receiving end of his ire very often. At first I thought that he was being indulgent towards me purely out of mischief towards the experienced trained actors he would put me on stage with. ‘Look at Michael,’ he would hiss at the RADA graduates, ‘He’s brilliant, and he edits gardening books!’

Later I would learn that Ken simply respected no hierarchy on stage or off. (My dad was the same.) For Ken, every human being, no matter what their professional back-story, contained the latent potential to amaze and astonish other people and themselves. There were no rules as to what form this potential should take; it was different for everyone Ken came in contact with. It might even be the ‘legendary minus factor’: the ability to leave the stage and make it look somehow fuller. Whatever Ken thought you had, he would seize on and whip it into shape. I don’t think Ken ever really knew what to make of me, but his interest in me was never to mould me into an acolyte, but to goad me into discovering my potential and developing my self-astonishment. Only after his death did I appreciate how many hundreds of lives Ken had changed in this way.

For me and for many others, Ken was a lighthouse, showing up the dangerous rocks of banality on which so many boats have foundered and revealing the vast extent of the expanses of exciting waters that lie beyond everything we're comfortable and familiar with.

When I half-consciously imitate Ken with my nasal mannerisms on stage, it is a sign that I am being fearful, not confident enough to be adventurous with my own voice. I am sailing too close to my lighthouse. And in playing safe, I’m courting failure. He’d want me to strike out further, and that is what I will endeavour to do in the future. I’m glad to say I've taken his name off my press blurbs, but I will always keep Ken in view, if only as a speck of light on the horizon to assure myself that I’m not sailing headlong up my own arsehole. Only then will I perhaps one day generate a little light of my own.

Dave's Joke of the Fringe

Darren Walsh has won "Dave's Joke of the Fringe" for this joke:

"I just deleted all the German names off my phone. It's Hans free."

I'm not a big fan of jokes, though you'll often hear me laugh at a pun, and Darren has many. I don't know of any comedian who thinks that it is logical to rank individual lines in order of funniness. Every performer is unique, and every performance is a one-off. And every performance is experienced differently by every person present. But there are moments when in spite of all this audiences become united, and for an instant an illusion of shared reality is sustained for the duration of a burst of communal laughter. How that happens is an actual miracle, nothing short of magic. 

Like the review star system, "Dave's Joke of the Fringe" is an attempt to suck all the magic, wonder and joy out of the experience of comedy, and to reduce it to an abstraction of craftsmanship, a formula for gags, a list of comedy sentences. What is the motivation for the existence of "Dave's Joke of the Fringe", aside from a publicity stunt? I think it is fear: fear that something might exist in laughter that is impossible to quantify, something ineffable and weird. To admit it exists is to admit that our shared reality rests on immaterial foundations.

Darren Walsh's joke works, because Darren Walsh works, and he deserves to be celebrated. He works conspicuously harder than most comedians. The joke works because only he can deliver it in the way he delivers it, at the moment he delivers it, in that instant that becomes memorable in the light of the audience, who light up in recognition of it.

My favourite Darren Walsh joke is this:

"I was in an Indian restaurant eating a curry when I got some surprise bad news: my naan had slipped into a korma."

Darren tells it better.

"The Golden Age of Steam" – report card

Before the Edinburgh Fringe this year, I made a list of ten things I wanted to achieve. It’s time to return to that list, to see how well I did.

1. Make a show that (by my standards alone) is better than "The Human Loire". (It will include, among other things: less reliance on props, gimmicks and sound effects; better pace and structure; more audience interaction; a clearer thematic through-line. And it will end on a song.)

SUCCESS. “The Golden Age of Steam” is a better show than “The Human Loire” (though some will doubtless prefer the Loire’s more flamboyant moments). The whole show and props fitted into a single bag, and used only a handful of repeated sound cues. I loved chatting and interacting with the audience. Whereas “The Human Loire” was simply a collection of acts put in an appropriate order, “The Golden Age of Steam” had an internal logic to it. One reviewer complained that there was no structure or meaning in the show, missing the clues and associations I had placed there.* He didn’t get it, and he is entitled to feel let down, but I don’t think the show would have been better (by my standards) if I had made these more explicit. I’m proud of the song.

2. Preview it at least three times before Edinburgh.

SUCCESS. There were six and a half London previews booked in. One was cancelled.

3. Find new and exciting ways to promote it.

NON-SUCCESS. I had plenty of good half-baked ideas, the best of which was to lead a train-like conga of audience members through the streets of Edinburgh, chuffing and whistling. One excuse I gave myself for not doing this is that it would have been a distraction from the principal task of performing, but probably I was just chickening out.

4. Perform it six times in Edinburgh with wholehearted commitment.

MAJORITY SUCCESS. At the very start of the second show, I twisted my right knee painfully while jumping up onto the high stage at The Hive. For the rest of the hour I was in terrible agony, which was so intense that at times I almost forgot what I was doing. It was not a good performance, but I’m proud I soldiered through (bless me). For the remainder of the run, I wore a heat bandage and took strong painkillers. And I incorporated references to my limp and restricted movement into the show, which actually improved it.

5. Take big risks for the sake of fun and enjoyment.

MAJORITY SUCCESS, I think. Risks that you fail to take are hard to spot in hindsight. My favourite moments in the show were the ones where I allowed proceedings to get almost out of hand: engaging with a surreal heckle, overseeing a dangerous moment with a hammer, Bob Slayer jumping up on stage, etc. 

6. Fill the room to bursting for at least one performance.

NON-SUCCESS. After I wrote that aim, my venue was changed from a proposed space at Cowgatehead that seated “50” to the much larger Big Cave at The Hive that comfortably fitted more than twice that number. I employed two flyerers to help me get more people in, but my largest audience was a little under 50, more than last year’s show but not enough to fill the hypothetical room at Cowgatehead (which, in the end, never existed). I also had many walk-outs.

7. Perform guest slots every day I am in Edinburgh.

NON-SUCCESS. For five nights, I had fun playing the seventeenth-century mass murderer Elizabeth Bathory in Alexander Bennett’s “Hell to Play”. I also did a slot at ACMS, which was a hoot. But I failed to seek out those obscure comp shows of surreal, clowny delights. I ought also to have extended my enquiries to more conventional stand-up nights. Some missed opportunities there.

8. Watch more shows; spend less time recuperating in my room.

SUCCESS. Having a hostel room in the very centre of town helped greatly. Although I was suffering from a cold and a sprained knee, I refused to let this slow me down too much, and although I had a couple of “lazy” days, when I was simply too exhausted to go out to see certain things I wanted, I was delighted and inspired by the many bold, beautiful and varied experiences I had. Too many to list here.

9. Assist friends with their shows (flyering, teching and bucketing).

NON-SUCCESS. Probably my biggest non-success of the Fringe. Lack of planning and tiredness played their role here. I did a small amount of flyering and plugged friends’ shows after my own, but I was otherwise entirely focused on “The Golden Age of Steam”.

10. Secure opportunities to repeat and develop my show further in London later in the year.

NON-SUCCESS. But perhaps it’s not too late. I would love to perform “The Golden Age of Steam” a few more times. It’s hard to let go of it. But the come-down from the successes of Edinburgh make the prospect of reassembling the show in London a hard one. After all, one of my previews was in front of a single audience member and two of the bar staff. Another preview was cancelled because nobody showed up at all. I’m not good enough at self-promotion. It would be absurd to expect Edinburgh to bestow public recognition upon me, and I am still confused about how I should proceed. Or should I simply wait? Part of me would prefer to end on a high, and busy myself instead with new projects. 

There it is. I calculate my successes to be about 5 out of 10. Three stars. But like the star system on reviews, the figure is meaningless. The success of the first aim – the creation of “The Golden Age of Steam” – overrides all the others. The whole experience at this year’s Fringe was fun, exhausting and inspirational: enough experience for a whole month.

* E.g. the four modes of transport referenced: air, car, train and foot; the modified repetitions in the script; the “Golden Age” pre-industrial bucolic section on harp and flute; and the large number binary choices (“to be or not to be”, “do you get it or not?”, “praise or scorn”, “poetry or Lilt”, etc.) presented throughout the hour. All deliberate.

I'm doing good, thanks

Not long ago, my brother was recounting an anecdote about his son. My nephew had recently come home from school announcing that he'd "done good" in class. It became my brother's duty to sit him down and teach him a couple of important lessons. Firstly: the correct use of the adjective and the adverb. More importantly: doing well is not at all the same as doing good. The people who do well in this world are rarely if ever the same people who do good. That's quite a grown-up lesson.

For the last couple of years, I've shifted my creative energies away from improvisation towards solo semi-scripted comedy. In doing so, I've met with a degree of success. I've done a few decent shows; I've been given opportunities to perform in front of larger audiences, alongside some remarkable people; and I've been written about on prestigious blogs.

People sometimes tap me on the shoulder to congratulate me on how well I'm doing.

But "doing well" in a creative career is not the same as "doing well" at school. At school the rewards are fixed and specific: getting good grades, winning prizes and coming first. In a creative context, the grades, prizes and targets are the ones that you set for yourself. And these targets are constantly shifting and will never, ever, ever be entirely met. If I happen to do a good show, the goal is to do a better one. If someone happens to pay me to perform, I will afterwards wonder if I might get paid a bit more in future. And so on, forever. (For comedians, this process continues until they become Lee Evans, and then they stop.)

Achievements such as fame, money and creative success are not the rewards for hard work. They will only ever be receding mirages that seem to beckon me onwards through a featureless landscape. For me, the true measure of my work is the confidence and joy I get from doing what I want to be doing, to the best of my ability, moment by moment. The work is the reward.

If my goal is to "do well" in comedy, I will always be disappointed. Instead I have resolved to "do good".

This way of thinking has its roots in the philosophy of improvisation, which continues to inspire me, even though I'm no longer an improviser. Whatever my nephew chooses to do with himself in the future, I hope he does good.

Camel Guns

Cosmic Trigger – first incomplete thoughts

Cosmic Trigger is a play about ideas, by which I mean that it makes ideas sensational. It would be easy to create an adaptation of Robert Anton Wilson's book consisting of nothing but a succession of wordy philosophical and speculative conversations, punctuated by "events". What Daisy Eris Campbell's play compellingly demonstrates – through its synchronistic structure, by its enthusiastic individual performances and in the sheer pottiness of the project as a whole – is that the ideas we entertain are indistinguishable from the physical world that our brains create. Events and ideas are one and the same. 

In other words, to live in the most liberated way possible, we are obliged to suppose everything. This involves embracing contradictory realities simultaneously, while becoming a prisoner of none. The three principal characters – Robert Anton Wilson, Kerry Thornton and Timothy Leary – each attempt to live in this idealistic Discordian paradise, but with varying degrees of success. Oliver Senton (with whom Kate Alderton should be mentioned in the same breath), Lee Ravitz and Andrew MacBean provide a human scale to these larger-than-life characters engaged on this journey. 

To reflect the multiplicity of realities colliding with each other on and off stage, Cosmic Trigger employs a very broad range of theatrical moods. There is pantomime, cabaret and caper. There is a cheesy musical number (a explanation of the eight-circuit model of consciousness). There is both camp farce and good sex. There are spectacular costumes, sets and set pieces. There is also tragedy, expressed minimally through unadorned monologue in a single spotlight. Many of the most memorable moments come when the mood changes abruptly, such as Josh Darcy's explosive entrance as Ken Campbell, or the poignant scene in which Bob and Arlen's daft party is suddenly interrupted by horrifying news. The finale of the four-hour show is joyful, yet without being tritely upbeat. 

Throughout the play, the audience is treated to the joy of multiple worlds whooshing into existence. The happy energy of Wilson and Thornley, as they plan out Operation Mindfuck in Act One, infects the whole experience of watching it. We discover that the whole show (on and off stage) is a joke, a deep joke that we can choose to struggle with or go along with. Although the clever fourth-wall stuff offers regular reminders that reality is on the rocks, it is Eris, in the end, who completely capsizes the production. Whenever Claudia Boulton materialises, there is the genuine thrill of danger that only accompanies the best improvised mayhem. 

Dave, who couldn't be there, texted me afterwards, asking me to sum up the experience in a sound. The only thing I could think to reply was: "Zeus's orgasm". I wonder if Eris will forgive me, for using her [supposed] father's ejaculation as the ultimate metaphor for something as vast, ridiculous and fertile as Cosmic Trigger.

Can Comedy be Taught?

"Comedy cannot be taught; you're either funny or you're not."

I read that sentence the other day for the umpteenth time. Whenever I read this sentence, I sigh, frown, scratch he back of my neck and move on.

I used to agree with that statement more than I do now. I used to think that some actors and funny people were simply gifted, because it was impossible to identify what it was that made them special. Today this nebulous star quality is sometimes referred to as the 'X-Factor'. And if the skills required to amaze and to amuse cannot be identified or named, let alone transmitted from one person to another, then it seems to imply that those skills are innate.

But that's a completely monstrous inference, because it implies that plenty of us, by a genetic predisposition entirely outside of our volition, are not funny and never will be. Worse still, it's safe to say that many of us never-to-be-funny people are condemned to go through life with a burning desire to make people laugh – out of either a selfless need to spread joy or a personal desire to gain approval – but they never will.

I suppose that many comedians will at some point in their careers go through a phase of imagining that they are one of these tortured souls, whose curse is to wish desperately to be funny, while lacking sufficient God-given funniness. They will rage like Salieri in Amadeus, pointing an accusatory finger up at Heaven for having ordained such an unjust state of affairs.

It seems to me that we are all not only funny, but hilariously funny, because we all participate in the deep, universal irony of life, matter and things. According to my best attempt at a personal cosmology, Jokes are (along with Music, Stories and Games) the fundamental constituents of the universe. For some, being funny will come naturally, but everyone's comedy is unique and special, and it can't be expressed by trying to amuse other people. Rather than access the funny in ourselves, we often strive to imagine what other people might find funny, and attempt to replicate that. To be oneself is ridiculous, which is why the best comedians seem as though they were born funny: they are themselves. Is it possible to learn to be yourself? I suppose so.

After all, just because a quality cannot be broken down and transmitted, that doesn't mean it cannot be acquired. Comedy could be thought of as a virtue, like generosity or courage. No one would ever say: "Courage cannot be taught; you're either brave or you're not." Anyone can learn to be brave, yes, not by being taught it but by allowing themselves to become it. The same is true of comedy.

Of course, there are plenty of classes to be taken in stand-up comedy (and improv sometimes seems to consist entirely of classes). But it is worth remembering the limitations of these teaching situations. They can only teach you the paraphernalia of the craft, and nudge you into the correct state of mind for being yourself. If you treat comedy, improv or self-discovery as though they were skills that can be paid for and obtained in a classroom from a teacher, then you are shirking the responsibility you have to draw on your own resources, which are vastly more unimaginably unimaginable than you can possibly imagine.

For "Comedy cannot be taught; you're either funny or you're not," I propose the following: "I suppose that you are inherently and spectacularly funny; no one can uncork the source of your comedy but you."