Christmas.

So, two Christmas things and do try to bear in mind that It’s now four and a half weeks until Christmas which makes this not as premature as it possibly feels.

The first thing is that I’m doing three performances of A Show For Christmas at the Alexandra Palace Theatre on the first three Mondays of December.  If you’re unfamiliar with the theatre it’s very very lovely and if you’re unfamiliar with the show, here is the blurb, it should tell you everything you need to know:

————-

A Show For Christmas.

Written and Performed by Daniel Kitson.

It’s 4.52pm on Wednesday the twenty fourth of December when Pollyanna Plunket, briefly distracted by opening a bag of toffees – glances away from the road for no more than a second only to find, upon looking back that an old man,, from nowhere made his way to the middle of the street. She hits the horn, the man turns, she stamps hard on the brakes and whilst the vehicle, a mid sized motorhome – does slow down, it does not stop. Skidding on, over glistening black tarmac, careering into the old man –making no visible attempt to move - rooted to the spot, bent over under the weight of a battered red bag - the inevitable impact flipping him up over the bonnet and into the windscreen – his eyes oddly calm as they meet hers for a moment before he slumps down the glass, rolling back off the bonnet and out of sight.

A story about Possibility,Magic, Grief, Hope, Tradition and Toffees.

Christmas, basically.

In 2014 Daniel Kitson was asked by Shelley Hastings at the Battersea Arts Centre if he might want to write a Christmas show and, much to his surprise, he did.  It was performed that Christmas for five nights, in the Grand Hall at BAC and for fourteen nights the following Christmas at the Connelly Theatre in New York before touring the UK in December of 2017.

This December, to mark the release of the story on Vinyl, CD and Cassette, the show will be restaged for three nights only in the extremely lovely surroundings of the Alexendra Palace Theatre.

————

There you go, tickets are £15 including all the fees and levys and so on and should be onsale by the time you’re reading this – You can get them by clicking HERE.

The second thing Christmas thing is that the Christmas records and CDs have arrived at my house, are filling my guest room and everything (remarkably) is on schedule for me to start posting orders out at the start of December. Also, I was able to order a few more of each, in case anyone didn’t want to think about Christmas in July but would now quite like a copy. So there’s limited availability of all formats and just to reiterate: All physical items come with a download code and the story will be available to buy as a download (without any physical purchase) from the First of December, I’ll send a separate email about that, on the first. But for now, you can place your orders for physical stuff - HERE

There we go.

That’ll do.

Coffee Time.

Maybe a Ghost Story at Wiltons

Okay.

This update is LATE.

VERY LATE.

But - i am doing Maybe a Ghost Story at Wiltons Music Hall from October 30th to November 4th. All the shows are now sold out, so you may justifiably be wondering why i’m wasting your time with this - BUT - there is also a live stream from an empty Wiltons on Halloween itself at 9.30pm.

Tickets are 7 quid and you’ll get access to the stream for 48 hours.

You can get tickets HERE - if you like.

THREE THINGS

Right then, I wont keep you long.

Firstly, in Australia, I have managed to wangle shows in Perth, Adelaide and Sydney in the run up to the previously announced month in Melbourne at the Comedy Festival.  I’m going to try and get something sorted in Brisbane in the next few days and there will be another email next week, with all venue, date and ticket details. In the meantime, you can buy tickets for Melbourne by clicking HERE

Secondly, I’ve put the last remaining CD’s back on sale again in the SHOP page on my website. I shut the shop before Christmas and then I was distracted by doing the Radio on Resonance – but they’re available again now – HERE

Thirdly (and most pressingly) I’ve booked myself a smattering of shows in small rooms, throughout February and the first bit of March. These are literally, the very first steps on the road to working out what the next show might be (a process that will continues throughout the Australian, dates) I was trying to wait for an idea to present itself before doing shows but I kept getting distracted by my cool synth and household tasks also, historically I’ve generally found the next idea by booking in a load of these sort of shows and wanging on interminably for 60-90 minutes – so that’s the plan and the tickets are cheap for a reason, these so called “shows” will be baggy as buggery*.

There’s a couple at the Trades Club in Hebden Bridge, a few at the Wardrobe in Bristol and some weekend morning shows at the Bill Murray, in London – they all go on sale tomorrow at 10am GMT and you can find the dates and buy tickets by clicking on the venues below.

Trades Club – Hebden Bridge - Scroll to shows on 20th and 27th of Feb.

Wardrobe Theatre – Bristol - Various Dates

Bill Murray – London - Various Dates

And that’s everything for now – I’ll dingle you again next week or so with all the Australia dates and there should be some news relatively soon about how you can see the live film we made of Tree in 2015 because I have VERY NEARLY finished doing the sound, thank you.**

*-This low level profanity may activate a few spam filters, I think. But it feels worth it.

**-Me and Ewan Jones Morris have finished editing it and after I’ve finished the sound, we’ll get it looked at*** by a person who knows what they’re doing and then Ewan will line it all up and that’ll be that and it will only have taken eight years. Okay?

***-Listened to.

A Possible Ghost Story at the Actual Globe.

Cooooooeeeeeee.

So this is an exciting bit of fun time good news.

I’m doing a new thing for two nights at The Globe Theatre in London on the 26th and 27th of October.

A few months ago, when I was booking the outdoor shows for the summer, my friend Will said he had a “contact” at The Globe Theatre. I, promptly swore at him and called him a stupid liar. Then, I went about my day, secure in the knowledge that Will was a stupid liar telling stupid lies and that even if he wasn’t there was no way The actual Globe would want a bald, middle aged man in varifocals, waddling about their glorious *stage, bellowing profanities into their historically significant** auditorium.

Anyway, it turns out that not only was Will telling the truth but also, The actual Globe seemed miraculously amenable to the aforementioned cheapening of what is, lets be honest, a pretty unique and magical*** theatre.

The dates they had available, however, were at the end of October which felt too late in the year to tag on to the Outside tour and besides the nature of the place made me want to write something new, not only that but also, the dates were tantalisingly close to Halloween and I had an idea.

So here’s the official blurb:

Maybe a Ghost Story.

By Daniel Kitson.

I don’t believe in Ghosts and I’ve never been comfortable with (or really, any good at) frightening people.

One Halloween, forty years ago, me, my mum and my brother turned off every light in the house and waited just inside the front door, for my dad to get home from work so we could frighten him. We’d made frightening lanterns from turnips and we’d learned a frightening song about witches.

But when my Dad walked in he wasn’t frightened.

He was, if anything, visibly relieved.

Apparently, having found the house in complete darkness he’d immediately been concerned as to the whereabouts and wellbeing of his family. Which meant that opening the door to find his sons waggling candle lit turnips and singing about being witches was, actually, quite close to comforting.

He said later, that he’d been worried by all the lights being off and I felt bad about that.

I still do.

A new show by Daniel Kitson written specifically for these two nights in this one place that will be funny, might be frightening and may, in spite of everything, be a ghost story.

There you go, that just about sums it up, I’ll be writing it in the next month but tickets go on sale tomorrow at 11am. If you’ve never been to The actual Globe, there’s no stalls, just uncovered standing room for around 600 people (groundlings, apparently) ensconsed by three tiers of covered seating. It’s pretty incredible. Price wise, they’ve been remarkably with standing available for a fiver and seats either 15 or 25 quid which is, frankly, a massive reduction on their normal prices, not only that but they’ve agreed to let you lot**** have priority access for two days along with their list before the shows go on general sale on Friday.

And you get that priority access from 11am tomorrow (Wednesday) at the following link.

https://basket.shakespearesglobe.com/events/30577?promo=135444

There’s no password or anything so don’t spread it around, they’ve held back some sets for general sale as well, so other people will get a fair go at things.

*- And wooden

**- Again, wooden.

***- Please see * and **

****-Valued members of the Daniel Kitson Marketplace.