I have almost exactly two months left until my Edinburgh show begins and I have not gigged at all this past week.
This would ordinarily be a concern, and perhaps I’m setting myself up for an inevitable fall, but I am currently feeling pretty confident about my show.
However, I have been doing Edinburgh for long enough now to know that you should never be too confident about anything at the Fringe. Every time you think you’ve got it sussed, it’ll throw something at you. Somewhere along the line, things will almost certainly go wrong and reality will come crashing down on you. The city is littered with debris from egos and destroyed souls.
My confidence could be coming from the various medications I’ve been taking for my chronic hayfever, but I think I have ‘something’ with this pub quiz concept.
In many ways, knowing that I have the quiz to fall back on takes some of the pressure off writing. I will actively be encouraging the audience to talk amongst themselves to discuss the answers, cunningly escaping the notorious final third when the audience’s energy is depleting.
I now don’t know if I’ll have the time to fit in everything I’ve written. This is definitely a better position to be in than desperately trying to make material stretch longer than it should, or throwing in some weaker stuff to pad it out. But then there is a chance what I include might not be very good after all, which is exactly what Edinburgh previews are for.
I’ll also need to think about prizes. The feeling of winning a pub quiz can sometimes be better than the prize you receive, especially if it’s a bottle of wine.
But all pub quizzes need prizes, everyone knows that.