OK so the blog got a little forgotten about over the past few days. The last week of action was a bit draining and the missus was over too so sneaking away to write this was a bit of an impossibility.
However, it's Sunday 30th August and it's OUR LAST DAY!!!! The great news is that, as I write this, it's more than an hour before the show and we sold out over an hour ago. In fact, we sold out 4 of the last five days and 8 of the last ten. All very impressive for a silly little show, loosely based around a flightless antartic bird. We checked the stats and, from the 1,135 tickets we could have sold over the whole Fringe, we sold 1,003. That's just under 89% for you budding mathematicians out there. We're all quite pleased. Thanks a billion to everyone who came down, saw the show and was so good to us. There are so many shows and we're still a little shocked that you chose to come and see ours.
We had our last team meal in a lovely place called Under The Stairs (more info here) which I can only recommend hugely to anyone who enjoys nice food and a cool atmosphere. Pretty cheap too. However, they did start playing loud house music during the main course. I don't think it was to make us eat quicker. We all tried to get pretty mangled after but everyone was too tired, except for Ben, who once again went out looking like a reject from MGMT. John was in a bit of a foul mood as he'd been called 'smug' at a Penny Dreadfuls gig by some tool who was upset that he was laughing too loudly. What a cock! Matt fell asleep cradling a bottle of Carlsberg, which was duly replaced with a ketchup bottle which he awoke to this morning.
Luckily, Mr. Farnan's been doing well too. He sold out WAY in advance yesterday and is on his way to such a situation again today. Should be a nice relaxing run-up to my 10pm flight home.
With that all said, I suppose it's time to sign off on this blog. I know I only made five posts in the end but I hope that anyone who's been following it has enjoyed reading about the underdog struggle that has been our Edinburgh journey: tech screw-ups, venue disasters, bizarre penguin suit thefts, 12 sell outs from 23 shows, 89% of tickets sold, cross-dressing (oh yes!), flyering like mo-fos, laughing like Eddie Murphy, getting some great reviews and watching one penguin walk in at the wrong moment 48 times in a month. It's been special.
A HUGE thanks to Ciara, Daire, Hugh, Sinead, Emma, Emma, Hannah, Simone, Barry, Dan, Ross, Tim, Sam, Ferdia and Isabelle for the help flyering (and for Hugh and Daire bringing our t-shirts over like a pair of wonderful pack mules). It was such a massive help to have extra hands on deck and we couldn't appreciate it more, even if we suck at saying thanks properly.
Of course, lastly, I should thank John, Matt and Ben for having a little faith at the right time and then coming together to create an amazing show which I'm so proud to be associated with. Anyone who's seen it hopefully realises, like I do, that there's so much more coming from all three of these guys (even if Oliver the Penguin doesn't really have any lines... or hands). Even more than that, they've been three amazing people to share a slightly bizarre but hugely rewarding experience with and, though I'm ready to go home, I already can't wait to start working towards Edinburgh next year.
Now, just to get the lads to write "A Betrayal of Penguins 2: No Time Like the Pheasant."
Cheerio!
Sunday, 30 August 2009
Wednesday, 19 August 2009
Lost (Presumably Stolen): Two Penguin Suits
So yesterday may have been the angriest day of the Fringe for the boys from Team Penguin. We came in refreshed after our day off on Monday and discovered that both of our penguin suits had been nicked from the venue dressing room. The even sadder bit is that it's yet another problem caused by the utter incompetence of some of our venue's staff.
You see, Sweet Entertainments are rather obsessed with turning our venue (The Sweet Heart) into a new Fringe Club where performers from all over come along and muse over the spirit of the Fringe (or something like that). As such, even though there's only one performance space, there are TWO bars in the venue, one of which is located right next to the performance space. Unfortunately, on Sunday night, one of our local bright sparks failed to lock the performance space which resulted in any drunk from the bar downstairs being able to wander in and rob or vandalise the props of any one of the six productions running there. Yes, this is a professional venue with seven years experience on the Fringe.
Even more fun is that fact that we've since heard that that night one of the barmen found one of the suits on the ground while cleaning the bar (our thief must have decided that he had no use for two penguins suits and discarded one on the dance floor) but our clever barman decided to leave it where it lay "in case it was meant to be there for a show or something". Yes, we are paying to perform in a venue run by these people.
Needless to say, the Edinburgh Police and my insurance company are far from interested in helping us out given that the theft was caused by venue negligence. We bought a new suit but it's a bit shit and I keep feeling like we're slightly short-changing people. It's all a bit gay right now and the venue have done more washing their hands of the issue than actually helping.
However, you know what they say about clouds and silver linings? Well, only a few hours later, we discovered this review online. It's a great review from a pretty important publication and it's full of incredibly quotable lines. Quite a joyous experience for all of us here.
As for sales and all that, we've had quieter days that we've become used to but still had well over 40 in both today and yesterday so as long as we hit the flyering hard tomorrow and the weekend goes as expected, we should have another week of selling over 80% of tickets for every show, which is pretty cool.
In a health update, I think we're all dying. One Ms. Emma Keaveney started displaying fluey symptoms while here last week and I believe she may have infected us all. I'm just about over my bout of Keaveney flu but messrs Smyth and Clifford are definitely suffering while incidents of sniffles are becoming more and more prevalent in 30 Polwarth Gardens. No one has yet been quarantined but that situation may not last.
In other Edinburgh news, the sun made a rare reappearance today. That was nice. I think it was just doing a showcase slot though as it now appears to be backstage getting high or something.
I promise the five person readership of this that there'll be more soon.
You see, Sweet Entertainments are rather obsessed with turning our venue (The Sweet Heart) into a new Fringe Club where performers from all over come along and muse over the spirit of the Fringe (or something like that). As such, even though there's only one performance space, there are TWO bars in the venue, one of which is located right next to the performance space. Unfortunately, on Sunday night, one of our local bright sparks failed to lock the performance space which resulted in any drunk from the bar downstairs being able to wander in and rob or vandalise the props of any one of the six productions running there. Yes, this is a professional venue with seven years experience on the Fringe.
Even more fun is that fact that we've since heard that that night one of the barmen found one of the suits on the ground while cleaning the bar (our thief must have decided that he had no use for two penguins suits and discarded one on the dance floor) but our clever barman decided to leave it where it lay "in case it was meant to be there for a show or something". Yes, we are paying to perform in a venue run by these people.
Needless to say, the Edinburgh Police and my insurance company are far from interested in helping us out given that the theft was caused by venue negligence. We bought a new suit but it's a bit shit and I keep feeling like we're slightly short-changing people. It's all a bit gay right now and the venue have done more washing their hands of the issue than actually helping.
However, you know what they say about clouds and silver linings? Well, only a few hours later, we discovered this review online. It's a great review from a pretty important publication and it's full of incredibly quotable lines. Quite a joyous experience for all of us here.
As for sales and all that, we've had quieter days that we've become used to but still had well over 40 in both today and yesterday so as long as we hit the flyering hard tomorrow and the weekend goes as expected, we should have another week of selling over 80% of tickets for every show, which is pretty cool.
In a health update, I think we're all dying. One Ms. Emma Keaveney started displaying fluey symptoms while here last week and I believe she may have infected us all. I'm just about over my bout of Keaveney flu but messrs Smyth and Clifford are definitely suffering while incidents of sniffles are becoming more and more prevalent in 30 Polwarth Gardens. No one has yet been quarantined but that situation may not last.
In other Edinburgh news, the sun made a rare reappearance today. That was nice. I think it was just doing a showcase slot though as it now appears to be backstage getting high or something.
I promise the five person readership of this that there'll be more soon.
Saturday, 15 August 2009
Second Saturday and Edinburgh is Mental!
So that title kinda reveals the mood of the day. The town's been thronged and it's just taxi after taxi flying by our venue at the mo. We had another sell-out today, and that was at the venue's new, higher capacity of 51 seats. People just love Ben in that chuffin' penguin suit!
We got our second review today, from a website called All The Festivals.com. You can find it here. It's a bit of an odd one as they seemed more interested in Matt giving out cushions than much of the rest of it and they only gave us 3 stars, even though they seemed to really enjoy it, and even said, "If you are looking for a pleasurable way to commence your festival experience then Betrayal of Penguins is ideal." Ah well. We'll have one from The List coming soon hopefully.
The show's building a great buzz here and people keep trying to steal our t-shirts which are, in fairness, quite spiffing. Also some great laughs along the way.
My second group of visitors left this evening so I reckon it's sleep time. The weather took a bit of a vicious turn yesterday and I'm still recovering a bit from it all and I think everyone needs a good sleep. Plan is to have a bit of a team meal this evening to slap ourselves on the back for a great first week (and a bit).
We finally caught 'Shut Up, Play' today which was amazing and was more than worth the £1 I paid for it. We also got to see The Body Tights Man Show doing a slot on the Royal Mile today which was so cool. I can't really explain what it was, but it was definitely memorable.
This is a short one but there'll be much more blogging soon. Short message is: Show's going well, houses full, happy days!
We got our second review today, from a website called All The Festivals.com. You can find it here. It's a bit of an odd one as they seemed more interested in Matt giving out cushions than much of the rest of it and they only gave us 3 stars, even though they seemed to really enjoy it, and even said, "If you are looking for a pleasurable way to commence your festival experience then Betrayal of Penguins is ideal." Ah well. We'll have one from The List coming soon hopefully.
The show's building a great buzz here and people keep trying to steal our t-shirts which are, in fairness, quite spiffing. Also some great laughs along the way.
My second group of visitors left this evening so I reckon it's sleep time. The weather took a bit of a vicious turn yesterday and I'm still recovering a bit from it all and I think everyone needs a good sleep. Plan is to have a bit of a team meal this evening to slap ourselves on the back for a great first week (and a bit).
We finally caught 'Shut Up, Play' today which was amazing and was more than worth the £1 I paid for it. We also got to see The Body Tights Man Show doing a slot on the Royal Mile today which was so cool. I can't really explain what it was, but it was definitely memorable.
This is a short one but there'll be much more blogging soon. Short message is: Show's going well, houses full, happy days!
Thursday, 13 August 2009
This took too long to post....
External members of Team Penguin, I'm quite sorry this has taken quite a while to post. Loads of news from the Fringe.
So, since Saturday, we've sold out three of the four days and the show's been getting better and better. John just gets louder and louder and I love it. Yet again, there's been some incredibly silly problems with our venue's box office but we think (fingers crossed) that we've got it all sorted at last so we might actually see money from our ticket sales at the end of this whole thing.
We got a lovely, lovely, review from the nice people at Three Weeks. You can find it here: http://edinburgh.threeweeks.co.uk/review/6979. We've started stapling: "**** ...and not just because they're Irish" to all our flyers. We had an amazing crowd in today when we had two press heads in so fingers crossed that'll result in some more lovely words.
We've come across the best flyerer ever. He's a Japanese guy who dresses in tights as a ninja and shouts, "Japanese comedy! The body man tights show!" I tried to find some more info on them (they're called 'The 3 Gaga Men') and all I found was this: http://digg.com/odd_stuff/Asian_Women_Seek_White_Groveling_Men
It's not their website.
Pre-sales for the weekend are looking pretty good so we're looking forward to a good time ahead. All's going pretty well financially too so we might be able to start feeding Ben.
In other news, myself and Benny caught a show by a group called 'Frisky and Mannish' yesterday and it was the first thing to actually blow me away in years. Also, the other show we work on (Keith Farnan's 'No Blacks. No Jews. No Dogs. No Irish. All Welcome.') is selling out every day, usually a day in advance. He got a nice 4 star rating from the List too so all's well.
I'll try do this again soon so do check it up. Hopefully we'll have news of more reviews soon.
Keep watching the skies.
So, since Saturday, we've sold out three of the four days and the show's been getting better and better. John just gets louder and louder and I love it. Yet again, there's been some incredibly silly problems with our venue's box office but we think (fingers crossed) that we've got it all sorted at last so we might actually see money from our ticket sales at the end of this whole thing.
We got a lovely, lovely, review from the nice people at Three Weeks. You can find it here: http://edinburgh.threeweeks.co.uk/review/6979. We've started stapling: "**** ...and not just because they're Irish" to all our flyers. We had an amazing crowd in today when we had two press heads in so fingers crossed that'll result in some more lovely words.
We've come across the best flyerer ever. He's a Japanese guy who dresses in tights as a ninja and shouts, "Japanese comedy! The body man tights show!" I tried to find some more info on them (they're called 'The 3 Gaga Men') and all I found was this: http://digg.com/odd_stuff/Asian_Women_Seek_White_Groveling_Men
It's not their website.
Pre-sales for the weekend are looking pretty good so we're looking forward to a good time ahead. All's going pretty well financially too so we might be able to start feeding Ben.
In other news, myself and Benny caught a show by a group called 'Frisky and Mannish' yesterday and it was the first thing to actually blow me away in years. Also, the other show we work on (Keith Farnan's 'No Blacks. No Jews. No Dogs. No Irish. All Welcome.') is selling out every day, usually a day in advance. He got a nice 4 star rating from the List too so all's well.
I'll try do this again soon so do check it up. Hopefully we'll have news of more reviews soon.
Keep watching the skies.
Sunday, 9 August 2009
First Post - So Much News!
So when I was leaving for Edinburgh, I promised a few friends I'd blog about how we've been doing instead of worrying too much about e-mails. A few days in and I finally have a couple of minutes spare to get this set up so here goes....
For those who are reading this and blissfully unaware of what this is all about, I'm over in Edinburgh producing a comedy show by John Gallagher and Matthew Smyth who are, it turns out, very funny men. The show's called 'A Betrayal of Penguins' and you can find out a little about it here and here.
So Ben (our tech and penguin) hit Edinburgh on Wednesday morning at stupid o'clock. After much crankiness and occasional spurts of overexcitement from myself, we popped along to a Pappy's Fun Club preview show, which turned out to be just as amazing as we'd expected it to be. On Thursday morning, the guys had their first taste of Edinburgh performing by doing a five minute set at our venue's launch in the early afternoon. Despite an odd mix-up with the MC which left everyone feeling a little awkward for a few seconds, the set went great and really set us up well with the venue folks. We also saw a group called Original Tempo who put on one of the coolest performances I've ever seen with an excerpt from their show 'Shut Up, Play!!!'. We're all creaming ourselves at the prospect of seeing them live properly in the coming days.
We've had a couple of teething problems with the venue which included two attempted tech rehearsals which were double booked and a slightly bizarre situation where there's more tickets for sale at the box office than there are seats in the venue. The lads also performed at the venue's second launch where loud talking (to the point that the acts were inaudible) was somehow encouraged by the MCs. However, everything's pretty well ironed out now and the guys working at Sweet Venues are all really cool which makes everything pretty forgiveable.
So, as regards the actual show, we've done three performances and sold out two so far. First day, we were great on the streets flyering but only got 26 into our 42 seater space. There were 42 in on Saturday and we got extra seats in today to allow us to have 51 in. It's getting a bit cramped, but I suppose that's a nice complaint to have. All this means that we're getting closer to eliminating the last of the financial risk of being here and it's looking like there's a chance that this could be a rather successful run. Matt and John have been performing really well, particularly on Saturday when a nice lady from the Edinburgh Comedy Awards was in. (Not that we'd get ahead of ourselves enough to think that we'll be hearing back from them.)
Sales for tomorrow (Monday) are already strong so we're looking forward to another nice day one the streets. Today was really cool and I even managed to get an amazing penguin balloon made for me by a balloon modeller. People here are mad for penguins which is proving rather helpful. We also have great t-shirts with our penguin logo which arrived on Saturday morning which are making life much easier.
In other cool news, the other show Ben and I are working on 'No Blacks. No Jews. No Dogs. No Irish. All Welcome.' by Keith Farnan has sold out three days on the trot now. It's a great show so if anyone reading this ends up in Edinburgh over the next fortnight, you should check him out too.
I'll check back in tomorrow with a less wordy update and maybe some pictures.
For those who are reading this and blissfully unaware of what this is all about, I'm over in Edinburgh producing a comedy show by John Gallagher and Matthew Smyth who are, it turns out, very funny men. The show's called 'A Betrayal of Penguins' and you can find out a little about it here and here.
So Ben (our tech and penguin) hit Edinburgh on Wednesday morning at stupid o'clock. After much crankiness and occasional spurts of overexcitement from myself, we popped along to a Pappy's Fun Club preview show, which turned out to be just as amazing as we'd expected it to be. On Thursday morning, the guys had their first taste of Edinburgh performing by doing a five minute set at our venue's launch in the early afternoon. Despite an odd mix-up with the MC which left everyone feeling a little awkward for a few seconds, the set went great and really set us up well with the venue folks. We also saw a group called Original Tempo who put on one of the coolest performances I've ever seen with an excerpt from their show 'Shut Up, Play!!!'. We're all creaming ourselves at the prospect of seeing them live properly in the coming days.
We've had a couple of teething problems with the venue which included two attempted tech rehearsals which were double booked and a slightly bizarre situation where there's more tickets for sale at the box office than there are seats in the venue. The lads also performed at the venue's second launch where loud talking (to the point that the acts were inaudible) was somehow encouraged by the MCs. However, everything's pretty well ironed out now and the guys working at Sweet Venues are all really cool which makes everything pretty forgiveable.
So, as regards the actual show, we've done three performances and sold out two so far. First day, we were great on the streets flyering but only got 26 into our 42 seater space. There were 42 in on Saturday and we got extra seats in today to allow us to have 51 in. It's getting a bit cramped, but I suppose that's a nice complaint to have. All this means that we're getting closer to eliminating the last of the financial risk of being here and it's looking like there's a chance that this could be a rather successful run. Matt and John have been performing really well, particularly on Saturday when a nice lady from the Edinburgh Comedy Awards was in. (Not that we'd get ahead of ourselves enough to think that we'll be hearing back from them.)
Sales for tomorrow (Monday) are already strong so we're looking forward to another nice day one the streets. Today was really cool and I even managed to get an amazing penguin balloon made for me by a balloon modeller. People here are mad for penguins which is proving rather helpful. We also have great t-shirts with our penguin logo which arrived on Saturday morning which are making life much easier.
In other cool news, the other show Ben and I are working on 'No Blacks. No Jews. No Dogs. No Irish. All Welcome.' by Keith Farnan has sold out three days on the trot now. It's a great show so if anyone reading this ends up in Edinburgh over the next fortnight, you should check him out too.
I'll check back in tomorrow with a less wordy update and maybe some pictures.
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