All posts in Live Performance/Events
Election night stand-up
I was back in my home town last night for the excellent Manilla Road comedy club at The Victoria pub in Birmingham City Centre! Jim Kelly persuaded me to do an Open Spot, even though I have very little experience of doing stand-up. It was great fun, but I can’t see myself doing it again any time soon. They say nothing goes out of date quicker than topical comedy, but on the night of the General Election I thought it would be a missed opportunity to stick to UHT Long-Life Comedy. So I did a set entirely composed of stuff from the news. As always it was a great night with Jim the hairy compere steering his eclectic ship towards the smashing headliner, the furious and fiery Ian Cognito. Bostin – as they say round these parts.
In The Woods festival 2012
In The Woods is a small, secretive festival which takes place across a day and a night in the woodlands of Kent. So small and secretive in fact, that I didn’t even know of its existence until I received an unexpected invitation to perform on the Spoken Word stage… And so, yesterday’s line-up (15.30 – 21.00) was as follows: Dion Troubadour Power Charlie Dupre Dorothy Fryd and Richard Navarro Juha Virtanen Richard Dadd (that’s me) Indigo Williams I’d like to extend my thanks to organiser Richard Navarro, who remembered me from seeing one of my Canterbury performances several years ago. For my slot (7.30-8pm) I performed a brand new short story ‘The Diary’ about an introspective diarist who receives an unwanted tirade of attention, with comic consequences. My audience sat on hay bales, the arena a small clearing between trees hung with lights and interspersed with art installations and flowers. It was a pleasure to be involved, especially in such a unique and atmospheric setting. Due to noise restrictions, festival-goers were handed wireless headphones, meaning that my microphone fed into people’s ears rather than out of speakers. The same went for the silent disco, the cinema tent, even some...
Advent calendar 19: Melancholy Santa
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...
Important announcement from GamaZone Corp.
The GamaZone Corporation is your official supplier of all entertainment and multimedia. This evening’s entertainment (Friday 10th June) will be supplied from 7.30pm at the No Reading Alone event in Oxford. Click here for full details for attending this event. Attendance is compulsory. GamaZone asserts full copyright in perpetuity. Any unauthorised distribution, sale or copying with be met with severe penalties. “GamaZone. The only option” is a Registered Trade Mark of the GamaZone Corporation Copyright 2071 the GamaZone Corporation
One week to go…
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...
Coming in June: No Reading Alone 3
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...
No Reading Alone 2 in Oxford
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.
No Reading Alone in Oxford
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!
Lazy Anthropology: a film by Pip Price
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:
Richard Dadd stands up and gets laughed at
Earlier this month “Coffee & Corks” held a night of comedy and spoken word with top-notch foolery and storytelling from the legendary Devilstick Peat, as well as poetry from compere Rick Bollinger, and lots more besides. There was also stand-up comedy . . . Now, I’ve run away and hid from all previous invitations to perform at the cafe, but this time I finally gave in because it was in aid of the Macmillan cancer charity. Cancer’s a pile of shit and 2 people close to me lost family members to it last year, so I decided to stop being such a bloody coward and try to make people laugh to help raise money for this cause. Thankfully it went rather well. A very poor quality audio recording was made, and can be heard below. It was originally made just for my own reference, and the sound quality is far too poor to go on the Bakery Audio Player. But hopefully you can all ignore the constant ruffle of my coat on the microphone and still enjoy the material. I’m thinking about refining the set and maybe performing it again some time, so maybe there will one day be...
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