Trial run

Well, it has been a hectic week, in about a million ways. The most important thing was Monday night, where we had the first, and probably only, preview of Shallow End. It was at the Limelight in Crewe, a really nice venue, although the crowds outside weren't for us, but for Blues guitarist, Walter Trout. (He's good, really good, but a little too fond of 10 minute solos that go nowhere.)

Anyway, we had the DVD intro that Richard had been working on, finally arriving on the Saturday. I spent the weekend creating Flash animations, to be transferred to DVD. However, a panic on the Sunday night as I the software I had to create DVDs no longer worked. A swift download of er, some other software from somewhere else, and I left it converting while I headed off to work.

Home, and straight onto the PC. DVD full of animations burned. Excellent. Now all we needed was a player. Geoff provided a laptop, but we didn't have the right leads to plug into the Limelights mixing desk. I headed into the loft, and pulled out our old DVD player. Then a headlong dive into the Big Box of Random Cables (every geek has one) for a couple of leads. I find two of the three, and say stuff it, we run with video and mono. Put the animation DVD in and press play.

Which shows a still. I press Next for the next animation. Another still. I panic.

Turns out that the conversion software had taken 15 minute Quicktime movies and created 15 minute DVD movies. Trouble was, for some reason it was 15 minutes of the first frame. Considering the DVD is a large part of the show, we were faced with a problem.

No matter, have to head for the Limelight. By necessity, the show was going to be about a quarter adlibbed, with bits of it read off a clipboard which carried the entire script. More problems, as the projector wasn't working so even Richards snazzy intro wouldn't work. However, we rigged up the telly they use for Karaoke to play that bit.

Some excellent compering from Chris Brooker to warm the small crowd up and then, eyes on the telly. To be honest, a couple of laughs during the intro bit where we weren't expecting them to be and plenty when there were. Oh, and a nice bit of Phoenix as well. And then onto the script.

Call it nerves or settling the crowd, but Geoff did most of the talking for the intro. I managed to interject a bit (Geoff was bantering with a very pretty PE teacher and said "So you've got 14 year old boys masturbating and thinking of you" to which I replied "Christ, sod the 14 year olds, I'm thinking about it.") and then into the opening sketch.

And so on and so forth. We had to replace the DVD bits with what was basically me reading out what would be on screen. We did the quiz where we will be giving out real money on the night, replacing the cash with soft drinks and alcohol.

So what did we learn? Well, the structure of the show is sound. It starts off light and fluffy, heads somewhere deeper and cleverer before pulling back into fluffiness, which is exactly what we wanted. The show makes several points about the world we live in, but Geoff and I were determined that such points weren't to be hammered home like some comics - if you understand, thats cool. If you miss it, fair enough, there is plenty of nice, silly stuff.

A couple of bits didn't work, and thats fine too. In fact, they've already been replaced.

And finally Geoff and I were described on stage as "a marriage". First time either of us had even tried to share the spotlight, yet it instinctively felt right. We've been encouraged to write material together before, but there is a difference between writing as a pair and performing as a pair, especially when standup is such an individual art. But we took the mickey out of each other mercilessly and the adlibbed banter was a lot of fun. Geoff tried to go through the show minus a script, and I had the clipboard and there was a bit when he had a go at me for it. Then about three quarters of the way through, he realised he didn't know what the next bit was:

"Er... um, bollocks, let me see the clipboard."
"Ha! Not so smug now, Mr Memory Man!"

Anyway, we now know that Shallow End works. It really works, as well as we could hope. The only thing to do now is keep marketing and trying to sell as many of the 164 seats as we can. I'm sticking flyers and posters up tomorrow in Manchester, we've got a couple of radio ads, an interview on Key 103 and maybe even a ticket giveaway on Imagine FM. Oh, and hopefully a couple of bits in the MEN.

Shallow End is like the Phoenix. If we can get the bums on seats, we know we've got a good product to entertain them.