Screeeeeeeeeeeeeenings.

Well here we are.
 
I hope you’re holding up alright in what is, any way you slice it, a real shit* storm of a situation.
 
Personally, I’ve spent the last couple of months, worrying, video calling, avoiding the news, making some pots, reading the news, making courgette pickle, panicking, making rhubarb jam, video calling, managing my engagement with the news, seeing a gold finch, making a sourdough starter, video calling, feeling weird and forgetting why,  riding up an absolute piece of a hill, making a sourdough finisher**, accidentally kicking a football into my neighbours garden at the age of 42, video calling, sleeping erratically, hearing (but not seeing) an actual effing Woodpecker and also - editing together a film of my 2009 Edinburgh Festival show – The Interminable Suicide of Gregory Church. .
 
I initially wrote The Interminable Suicide of Gregory Church for the 2009 Edinburgh Festival and performed it at the Traverse Theatre most days at 10.15pm. Over the course of that run, celebrity columnist Stewart Lee walked out *** and Newscaster Jeremy Paxman visibly failed to stay awake.

I really liked the show, it was a storytelling show and comfortably my best up until that point,  It was deceptively simple but satisfyingly complicated, it was funny and sad, there was a bit of mystery in it and, i thought, when i did it right, it was quite exhilarating. 
 
I next performed the show in January of 2011 at St Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, New York (no big deal). They built me a little square of 200 raked seats in the middle of a huge warehouse and it was, to be completely honest, a pretty magical time. During that run art house musician types, Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson slept soundly in the second row for ninety minutes.  
 
I then toured the show to Australia, during which run, I am proud to say, not one cultural touchstone fell asleep or left, at pace, to defecate.
 
After that I brought the show back to the UK and toured it about for a few more months. At some point in that time, I contacted Chris Evans at Go Faster Stripe**** about the possibility of filming the show. It was the longest tour I’d ever done. I was proud of the show. It seemed worth trying to make a decent record of it.
 
Anyway, we emailed a bit, I lost my nerve and found my nerve and had my doubts and made big statements about ownership and whether I wanted to put it out and if so, then how and then we filmed it, on the 11th May 2011, at the Tobacco Factory Theatre in Bristol in the round with eight cameras.
 
Chris had agreed that if I didn’t like the edit, we wouldn’t put it out, he would forward me all the footage and the various sound recordings and if I wanted to have a crack at editing it myself, I could.
 
Well here we are – the best part of a decade and the early parts of a pandemic later – and I have just about got it finished. So, next week, from Monday the 18th, I’m going to introduce it and screen it, online.
 
Now, I’m doing this in what may strike you as a needlessly contrary way and, lets be honest, it could well be but it’s also, I think, a pretty fun and exciting way to do it. So here are the details.
 
 - I am going to introduce (this bit will be live) and then screen the show at 9pm every night, Monday to Friday and at 11am on Saturday and Sunday.
 
- There will be three screenings a day – 9pm in the UK, 9pm in Melbourne and 9pm in New York. And then at the weekend – 11am in the UK, 11am in Melbourne and 11am in New York.
 
- You can view the screenings from anywhere in the world, you don’t have to be local to the specific time zone – which is to say – you could feasibly watch the Melbourne screenings in London and the New York screenings in Melbourne and so on.
 
- The capacity of each screening will be limited according to the number of seats in the venue at which I performed this show in those places. So -
 
UK- Tobacco Factory Theatre, Bristol -  356 seats
MELBOURNE - Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre, Melbourne – 376 seats
NEW YORK – St Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn – 200 seats.
 
- Tickets will cost £5 (or local equivalent)
 
- All the money will go to The Angel Comedy Micro Bursary Fund – This is a new initiative being operated by Angel Comedy to support comedians who have lost work during the lockdown and throughout this ongoing, circuit decimating, diary clearing, livelihood buggering mess.*****
 
- Tickets will go on sale at 12 noon on Friday May 15th.  
 
- Melbourne tickets go on sale at Noon in Melbourne, New York tickets go on sale at Noon in New York and UK tickets go on sale at Noon in the UK.
 
 - You can buy tickets here - https://www.citizenticket.co.uk/organiser/daniel-kitson/

- You will need to create a citizen ticket account, in order to get your ticket. It will be emailed to you as soon as you complete the purchase.  There will be a button that says "Access Online Event". This button will be activated on the day of the screening, 30 minutes before the Start Time on your ticket. When you click on it, you will receive a link and a password - you click on the link and you enter the password and that's you in. 
 
And that’s it.
 
I am both pretty excited and a bit scared, to be honest. It’s been a lot of fiddling****** and thinking and tinkering and the truth is that I have no idea whether this is remotely appealing to people. But if it does work, I’ve got a variety of ideas for things to screen in similar ways. A couple more older things to release potentially but I am also having news ideas that I am pretty excited to make and then “stage” in a similar way.
 
I’ve always preferred doing a few smaller gigs (at slightly awkward times) rather than one big one and there’s no real reason for that to change now. Capping the tickets seems to make it feel more like an exciting thing to attend, potentially and also makes it a more sustainable way of continuing to make work and raise money for people in this, undeniably, odd situation.
 
Now listen, I’ll tell you this right now, there will, absolutely, come a stage when I’ll need to be making some sweet sweet coin for the Dan Dan Man******* but at the moment I spend a lot of my time feeling deeply sad and extremely lucky - there are obviously countless thousands of people whose lives have been and continue to be ruined by what’s happening in myriad ways which I cannot accurately imagine. Whereas I, a long term self isolationist, have stayed in my house and sat in my garden and ridden my bike and been, largely insulated from it all. So, if you’ll forgive me, I’m going to raise some money and fling it about like some sort of bald stuttering Christ figure.
 
So that’s it for now.
 
GOODBYE FOREVER
 
 
Daniel
 
 
 
 
*There’s a chance that me dropping this naughty word will encourage your spam filter to pop this email in the bin. But to be honest – If you can’t swear in emails to your mailing list at a time like this… Etc.
 
**A loaf of bread.
 
***He needed the toilet actually, so fair play. I mean, he did walk across the stage in his stocking feet to do so, but still, fair play.
 
****If you are unaware of Go Faster Stripe, they are very much worth checking out. Especially at the moment where they are doing weekly deals in aid of the Trussel Trust. This week it’s John Hegley – yes please. https://www.gofasterstripe.com/
 
***** If you like comedy and partaking in charitable deeds but think that maybe there are people infinitely more in need and deserving of help than ding dong comedians, then that is, hard to refute. So I’d direct you to http://www.comedyatthecovid.co.uk/ they have weekly Saturday shows, with half the money made going to the Trussell Trust and half being split between the acts. This was the first (and is probably the best, I’ve seen) of the “live” streaming gig type comedy events currently bobbing about.
 
Alternatively, if you want an object, a tremendous object, then Tim Key (Poet, Comedian, Fading Midfielder) and Emily Juniper (Artist, Illustrator, Designer) have collaborated on this wonderful thing - https://www.utterandpress.co.uk/bookshop/thursdays-a-limited-edition-print-for-the-nhs and all money goes to the combined NHS charities.
 
****** Grow up.
 
*******The name on my bank card.
 
********There will be a time when this sign off feels light hearted again. I truly believe that. It’s what gets me out of bed in the morning. It’s either that or the bin men. Or needing a wee. One of those three.
 

How Many Times Do i Have to Tell You - I am a Breakfast Radio DJ

A Reason to Wake Up.

Resonance FM

7-9am London Time (and available to stream until midnight)

Monday to Friday.

Starting tomorrow (Monday April 20th) and we’ll go week by week. See if it’s any fun and feels vaguely worth doing or just a pointless waste of everyones* time.

Listen At : - www.resonancefm.com OR 104.4fm in London

* Everyone disproportionately includes and may in some instances be limited to, Me.

Actually. No. I'm not going to Melbourne.

Okey doke.

Well,

The short of it is that I’m not going to come (or go, depending on where you are) to Melbourne for the Comedy Festival.

The long of it, is that what’s happening around the world with Lurgy 2020 © is, undeniably at this stage, a full blown kerfuffle. A kerfuffle that I’m keen to help mitigate in whatever infinitesimal way that I can. Which oddly, in this instance, means, choosing not to fly to Australia and squish strangers into a little room, late at night, to watch me stumble through a story that is currently, quite patchy.  

I, like most of us, I imagine, have had a variety of conversations with people about Covid 19 over the last couple of weeks. Some of whom were a good deal more worried than me and I tried to offer some sense of perspective and vigilant calm, others were much less worried than me and I duly attempted to instil a heightened engagement with the situation, appealing to their sense of social and personal responsibility.

Now on reflection, that’s a pretty arrogant response to differing degrees of concern, assuming those more concerned than you are panicking plum duffs and those less concerned are negligent nincompoops – having said that though– I reckon I’m bob on the money, worry wise.

It’s a fine line and I’m dancing on it.

My point is that some of you will be irked by this announcement and think it an hysterical over reaction whereas some of you will feel that I should have cancelled earlier but this whole thing is a pretty uncharted situation and I think it befits us all to seek out the best advice currently available and where that advice is sometimes contradictory, weigh up all available information and make the most responsible decisions we can for ourselves and others and currently, traversing the globe armed with an unfinished* show, in order to have what amounts to a lovely little working holiday whilst receiving a daily dose of laughter and applause doesn’t feel hugely responsible to me.

It’s important to say that reaching this decision is easier for me than for others. Not only have I been social distancing for my entire adult life ** but my habitual self isolation (historically seen by some as a crippling flaw in my personality) makes this evolving quagmire less logistically tricky for me than a lot of people. Also, because I only actually booked the shows a couple of weeks ago and hadn’t yet officially announced the ticket details, only a handful of seats have currently sold***

All of which means that I’ve been quite lucky here.

Lucky enough to somehow sidestep the (very real) complications affecting other peoples decisions in this area and be left with a relatively straightforward, if still deeply saddening, decision to err on the side of caution.

If I was already in Melbourne either as an audience member or a performer I would not necessarily be cancelling shows at this stage, but I am not there, I am here.

So here we are.

I really am very sorry not to be making it over there and already talking to the Malthouse to see if we can jiggle some mutually amenable replacement dates in at a later, calmer, potentially more vaccinated, point in the not tooooo distant future.

Okay.

There it is.

On a lighter note, the entire time I’ve been writing this, there’s been a bright green parrot sat outside my window in a Horse Chestnut tree.

So that’s something.

GOODBYE FOREVER****

*Barely begun.

** Perspicacity

*** You can contact the venue about refunds.

****Come on, there was always going to be a point when this felt a bit on the nose.

London, London Again and then Melbourne

Dear Member of the Daniel Kitson Marketplace. ™
 
 
I hope you are currently so well that’s its making you suspicious. I've currently got a plumber in my house replacing my soil stack (not a euphemism) and i've got a few things to tell you about – one is longer term, one is shorter term and two are super short term to the point of being pressing.  
 
So we’ll start with those.
 
Firstly, I am doing a benefit at the Backyard Comedy Club this coming Monday night (2nd March) for a charity that works against the practice of harvesting Bear Bile. Now, I mean, listen, I know that sounds like a weird, possibly made up thing and I dare say there’s other causes that seem more pressing to you. But let me say that firstly, its not made up. it’s as real as my elbow* and secondly, I think this cause might seem more pressing than homelessness or community arts radio if you were a bear trapped in a cage, having your bile harvested.
 
That’s what I’m telling myself, daily, at the moment.
 
And besides these things aren’t either/or are they?
 
Anyway. it’s been organised and booked and will be compered by Lou Sanders. Who will introduce an excellent bill of Sara Pascoe, Sarah Kendall, Adam Hess, Luke Mcqueen, Me! and …. More!
 
Most of whom, I imaginem, when contacted by Lou about the gig said some version of:
 
 “Sorry? Bear Bile? Am I hearing that right? Bear Bile? The bile of bears? Erm. Okay. No. Absolutely. Yeah. You’re sure that’s real though? Okay. Yuck. Sure. Let me check my diary, I’m pretty sure im busy, so I might not be able to …no, actually, …I am free”
 
And now, here we are, with a very good bill at a very good price on a very good Monday. You can get tickets here.
 
https://backyardcomedyclub.co.uk/event/charity-comedy-fundraiser-for-bears-trapped-in-captivity/
 
 
The next thing is that I am compering the Union Chapel on Saturday the 7th of March. This is not, repeat NOT, strictly speaking, a benefit gig. There is no charitable cause attatched to the show but it will of course benefit the audience with a magical Saturday night and me with an absolutely mound of cashola to spend on clay.
 
One for the bears and one for me!
 
Yipppppeeeeeee.
 
Ahem.
 
Anyway – im compering for Tim Key, Isy Suttie, Bridget Christie and Ivo Graham. I mean. The bill is so good, that I (and this is actually true) asked the “promoter” if I could be on, like a desperate little stage pig.
 
And you can get tickets for that one here
 
https://www.seetickets.com/event/live-at-the-chapel-with-bridget-christie/union-chapel/1484082
 
 
As for the other things
 
1 – I am coming to Melbourne for comedy festival and doing a show at the Malthouse Tuesday to Wednesday at 10pm and Saturday to Sunday at 1pm. (March 31 – April 19) This was agreed last night, so tickets aren’t yet onsale. I’ll let you know as soon as they are but it may be worth keeping an eye on the Comedy Festival and Malthouse websites. Here’s some blurb for that show.
 
 Shenanigan.
 
Last August at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, for the sake of something to do, I told a story with the aid of some post it notes, called Shenanigan and advertised at the time as,
 
“Something new, vaguely experimental, unfinished and frankly, quite unlikely to ever be finished.”
 
Anyway, It became a really good story that I very much enjoyed telling and I started wondering what this could become, and what I might do with it and then I went back to touring a different show, and doing pottery, and celebrating Christmas, I suppose, and I didn’t think about that story for six months.
 
Until now**.
 
Now, I’m really thinking about what this could become and what I might do with it and actually, how I’m going to spend the best part of a year, taking it apart and rebuilding it as a completely different show, staged in in a totally different way with a scale to boggle the bloody mind.
 
But first, to start that process, I’m coming to Melbourne (on something of a whim) and at relatively awkward times, telling that story, much like I did in Edinburgh – probably  (but not certainly) with the aid of some post it notes.
 
Not so much work in progress as a show that’s somehow both, basically finished and also, barely begun. 



Now, I won’t be doing any other cities in Australia on this trip, which I know will irritate eight to twelve of you, but the idea is to return early next year with a full scale tour of whatever this show becomes. And dont you worry, at that stage, I’ll be visiting EVERYWHERE*** to the point of very much out staying my welcome.
 
The final thing, for now, is a quick heads up that I’m currently putting the finishing touches to a small UK tour of KEEP for September and October of this year. after which that show will be done.
 
But that’ll do pig, I’ll send separate emails about Shenanigan in Melbourne and the autumn dates of KEEP as and when I have the information sorted.
 
Until then.
 
Lets all wash our hands a bit more. 

 
GOODBYE FOREVER.
 
 
 

 
*Potential new saying?
**27th Febuary 2020
*** EVERYWHERE does not include Everywhere