Category Archive for: ‘Live Performance/Events’

On the nineteenth day of Christmas,
The Bakery gave to me:
Santa having a breakdown

Earlier this month, Oxford was host to another of its top-notch No Reading Alone events. As with the first three events, organiser Ewan was kind enough to request a contribution from The Bakery. This time, though, I decided to experiment with something a little different.

I wanted to devise a monologue which was too bizarre to be a straight dramatic piece, but which was too straight to be called stand-up. Hopefully, the audience would be confused as to whether to look for gags or worry about my state of mind. Judging from the slightly disturbed faces that stared back at me, I think it was a successful experiment.

After the performance, a chap came up to me and said “I have no idea what that was, but I really enjoyed it.” This was pretty much precisely the response I was hoping for, and the best feedback I could have wanted.

Below is an audio recording of my 10 minute performance. I don’t think it works quite as well when you can’t see me, because some of the amusing/disturbing nature came from the contrast between my sincere delivery and my unkempt Santa costume. So for that reason, I would like to ask you to browse through the photos while you listen to the piece, and animate them in your mind.

I hope you enjoy this experimental oddity. It helps if you have a familiarity with Wham lyrics…

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

In case you’re wondering what produces the enthusiastic laugh which caps off the monologue, I was holding a limp Christmas cracker throughout, which I drew particular attention to whilst saying how the “answer is often right in front of you.” I then silently gestured to an audience member to pull the cracker.

The audience member pulls and wins. Leaving me to look devastated at my pathetic tiny vestige of cracker-end, while the audience laugh at my festive misfortune.

Big thanks to Ewan, also to Anna Fowler for taking the great snaps above.

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The Bakery’s largest and most ambitious film yet, The Last Bookshop, is scheduled to premiere in just seven days!

Clocking in at 15-20 mins, it has an impressive musical score, CGI effects, thousands of books, an octogenarian shopkeeper and a satirical fantasy view on the future of the book industry. What more could you ask for?

There’s an awful lot of metaphorical cake icing to get piped between now and then, but let’s ignore all the pressure for now and remind you that you are all heartily welcome to come and join us for the screening.

The premiere forms part of No Reading Alone, an evening of quality entertainment at the Isis Farmhouse, Oxford that has previously screened our films Chair and Small Picture Big Frame.

It is quite frankly the perfect venue to premiere a Bakery film, being eccentric, characterful, rustic and even a little awkward. You see, the venue cannot be reached by car, only foot. To get there, you must follow a riverside towpath, at the end of which  you are awarded with the sight you see here.

Look at those people in the beer garden. Look at them. Don’t they look happy? Don’t you wish you were them? Look they’ve got beer and everything. Look at the bloke with the panama hat on. I bet you wish you were him. You haven’t even got a panama have you? There’s probably ducks waddling round and everything.

That could be you, next Friday, if you come along. A full evening’s entertainment and a brand spanking new Bakery film. Come along, you know you want to.

Visit The Last Bookshop Blog for full details and directions to the venue.

Excellent news for fans of things that are good: ‘No Reading Alone’ is returning!

June 10th – exactly a month from now – is the date.

As the poster says it’s £4 a ticket from wegottickets.com for which you get a veritable orgy of quality comedy, spoken word, music and more in a quirky canal-side Oxford pub.

Myself and Chef Gaetan had a whale of a time when we attended the last event even if we did get lost on the way to the venue and end up bogged down in pitch-black fields surrounded by weirs and paranoia. Fortunately, the quantities of ale and entertainment on our arrival were enough to make our journey appear nothing more than a distant Tolkien-esque dream.

The event is held at the Isis Farmhouse pub, along a picturesque canal towpath in Oxford. Don’t bother asking Google Maps – it will lie to you. Just set out with confidence and supplies.

We’re utterly delighted that event organiser Ewan and his sizeable crowd have a fondness for our media baking, having previously screened Chair and Small Picture.Big Frame to a very warm reception. And the eagle-eyed among you will no doubt have spotted that The Bakery have a slot in the June event…

While we don’t want to jinx ourselves by saying that the film will be ready in a mere month’s time, we also can’t ignore the fact that production on our ambitious new film The Last Bookshop is racing ahead and, well . . . it just might be ready in a mere month’s time.

We have some hard weeks of production work ahead of us, so we plan to give you more concrete information very soon. But in the mean time, rest assured that The Bakery will be putting its ‘No Reading Alone’ slot to good use next month. There will definitely be footage shown, perhaps a trailer, some teasers and a brief intro from me . . . or, if the Gods smile upon us (please Gods) there might just be a finished film.

Either way, be excited. No Reading Alone 3 is coming.

It’s that time again for No Reading Alone: the event that sees comedy, books, poetry, music, films and wet, tasty beverages combined in one great swirling mass of excellence and then packed into all the minutes that happen between 7:30pm and closing time at Isis Farmhouse, Oxford.

Among the many great acts lined up, which include Medlar Lucan, author of The Decadent Cookbook and music from the likes of Juju of Little Fish, The Bakery will be once again taking the chance to show-off one of its baked wonders, this time with Chef Alaric’s beautiful short ‘The Chair‘.

So if you are in the Oxford area and you aren’t up to much, why not go along? In fact, even if you’re not in the Oxford area, and not free because you’re actually sky diving in the Hebrides or attending a funeral in Antwerp, come along anyway. Otherwise I’ll hate you.

Or more importantly, you’ll hate yourself.

Check out the No Reading Alone website Oxwords for more information.

Any event which chooses to advertise itself with an image of a doddery old man is surely off to a good start. So we’re very happy to see the poster below advertising tonight’s ‘No Reading Alone’ event at the Isis Farmhouse pub in Oxford.

There promises to be comedians, authors, poets, music . . . it’s a delightfully eclectic miscellany of worthy creative pursuits, and exactly the kind of thing of which the Bakery whole-heartedly approves.

So we’re somewhat delighted to confirm that a small slice of the evening will be Bakery-flavoured, in that Chef Adam’s charming wee animation ‘Small Picture. Big Frame.’ will be given an airing. If you’re reading this blog in the future, and you even attended the event yourself, perhaps you might wish to see it again. In which case, please be our guest . . .

Small Picture. Big Frame. from The Bakery on Vimeo.

Our big thanks to ‘No Reading Alone’ for including The Bakery on the bill. If they’re happy to have us back, then it would be an honour to stoke up our oven and collaborate on a future event.

P.S. If you’re in Oxford: go!

In times gone by, when Coffee & Corks was still the centre of Canterbury’s cafe culture, Michael Jackson had only just ceased being the baby sitter of choice for parents strapped for cash, and Tom German hadn’t yet broken the Estonian dubstep-black-metal scene, chefs Richard, Dan and Tom decided it would be quite the pleasant evening if they were to play the local folk open-mic night.

Calling themselves ‘Baffin Island’ – a name that would encapsulate the transient nature of the ‘band’ – they concluded that this night would be a one off, a tour de force of creativity, and, perhaps most importantly, that it would not be documented in any way.

It seems, however, that when they arrived at Coffee & Corks to play this now infamous gig, fate (or at least a budding anthropologist by the name of Pip Price) had other plans…

Ladies and Gentleman, Lazy Anthropology: