9PM, November 6th, The Etcetera Theatre

MORE INFORMATION AND TICKETS

REVIEW:

The Londonist – Unweaving Rainbows Review

BUY TICKETS HERE:

Online booking

Watch Stuart Laws and James Mason unweave what stand-up means to them as they comically explore the frustrations, hopes and lack of fulfillment they’ve experienced whilst attempting to make strangers laugh.

SPECIAL EXTENDED SHOW, HOSTED BY CHRIS BOYD

Stuart Laws Blog: http://stuchopslaws.wordpress.com

Stuart Laws Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stuchopslaws

James Mason Blog: www.masonstand-up.weebly.com

James Mason Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/subcynic

Unweaving Rainbows

(The reticent stand-up comedy show)

9th-10th August 2010, 8:45pm (1hour)

The Camden Fringe, Camden Head, 100 Camden High St, London, NW1 0LU

All tickets £7.50

Ticket booking 08444 77 1000 or www.camdenfringe.org

“One recovering comedian, one about ready to give up.”
Stuart Laws (“very funny” The New York Post) and, James Mason (Reading Comedy Festival New Act winner 2007.)
Stuart Laws: A recovering comedian, who no longer likes telling jokes and, even worse, has lost all respect for doing stand-up comedy. He gained minor YouTube celebrity with an online sitcom: Becoming Batman. Surprisingly he’s still congenially chirpy whilst performing stand-up.
James Mason: 28 years old, still living at home with his mum and dad in Reading, Currently in the comedy equivalent of lower middle management, and intends to pay lip-service to his own misanthropic distrust of pop culture,
Both: Unweave what stand-up means to them and comically explore the frustrations, hopes and lack of fulfilment they’ve experienced whilst attempting to make strangers laugh.

QUOTES:
Stuart Laws
“Very funny” – New York Post, “Very amusing” – The Sidekick Blog “An absolute pleasure to watch” – Ryan Fitzgibbon “A great shot-stopper” – Football team-mate
James Mason
“Adept at extracting laughs from his uncompromisingly derisory opinions.” – Steve Bennett Chortle.co.uk 2007 “A quiet barrage of understatement.- Moments of brilliance and Originality” -Three weeks www.threeweeks.co.uk/edinburgh/daily09-10.pdf

Stuart Laws-

stu@windowslaws.com http://stuchopslaws.wordpress.com http://www.youtube.com/user/stuchopslaws

James Mason-

masonsbrains@hotmail.com www.masonstand-up.weebly.com http://www.youtube.com/user/subcynic

http://unweavingrainbows.wordpress.com

Preview shows: The Torriano Kentish Town NW5 2SG – 2nd June, 1st July Afroba, Reading – 5th August

For information on the Camden Fringe please contact Michelle or Zena at the Etcetera Theatre: 020 7482 4857, press@camdenfringe.org.

£7.50 each from here:

http://www.spoonfed.co.uk/london/event/stuart-laws-james-mason-unweaving-rainbows/at/the-camden-head-formerly-liberties-bar/

Now, I’ll get you all up to speed about what this “stand-up comedy” is. You know that when you’re with your friends and you have a shared history of experience, memes and events? And you can just have a chat with them and end up laughing because you say little things that you’re friends understand are not true, is a silly conclusion or just unexpected turns-of-phrase? I give you an example.

You’re friend David is terrible with women. Your other friend (we’ll call him Andrew) asks you how your night out was. You reply: “Excellent, David banged three chicks.” You and Andrew laugh at the ludicrous and unlikely answer! David, of course, spent the evening crying into his Cobra beer.

So imagine all that laughter you have with your friends and then transplant that laughter to a room in a pub in London. Then remove your friends and an atmosphere of conversation. Replace it with a stranger and a microphone. Remove all that personal connection and replace it with a shared human connection. I give you an example:

Instead of a joke about how useless David is with women there will now be jokes about how a certain type of person is useless with women. Normally this is the actual person with the microphone – because the person with the microphone has enough feelings of social inadequacy that it translates to inability to effectively communicate with people when not holding a microphone. It is now the audience’s job to make the connection that the story about being useless with women applies to someone they know as well, maybe even applying to themselves.

And then, after you think you’ve heard all you can hear, another comedian takes the microphone and the whole charade starts again.

Unweaving Rainbows - Preview Show

I hope this has been an effective way of explaining how unique an idea myself and James Mason have had in putting on one of these events this Wednesday, 2nd June at Torriano Bar in Kentish Town. Please come down and be part of our friendship group.

Wednesday, 2nd June: 8:30pm – 10:30pm

COST: Free!

Torriano’s Bar

71-73 Torriano Avenue

KENTISH TOWN

By James Mason

Apparently it is the little things in life that give us the most happiness through out the coarse of the day:- a smile from an attractive stranger, no queue at the post office, watching a small child struggling to get their I pod shuffle headphones on under the strap of their helmet before they cycle of towards the A road.
Personally I’m just happy not to have to go to the post office at all, and judge anyone smiling in the street to be the mentally ill person they clearly are.

So that’s bollocks.

In a world of blogging, logging , and web clogging people are so used to voicing their opinion* that fewer and fewer are stopping to consider if they have anything of worth to say, I am more than aware that I don’t

THE END.
Not really

*an over heard conversation today- “I grew up with Queen, Dire Straits, and Eric Clapton…”  Really what you were raised in their rehearsal room or something?

I am aware that I don’t have anything to say. I am self aware, Thus worthy of writing something.
Using words like thus is just one example of my value.

Dawkins - Unweaving The Rainbow

So I am involved in this show called Unweaving Rainbows, which even I am not 100% sure what it’s all about, The title is half inched from Richard Dawkins, which in the context of his philosophy (science) relates to the fact that if you demystify a rainbow by explaining scientifically how and what it is, it is not diminished in terms of beauty but rather its beauty is heigh tened through a greater understanding of it.

I’m not even sure I fully subscribe to that, to be honest. With-in the context of performance, pulling back the vale is a technique that should be used sparingly, like an expensive spice sprinkled about the shenanigans, rather than an objective in and of it’s self.

Unless your like the Secret Magician and it’s your aim to show how it’s done like some kind of Wizbit Colombo, and everyone thinks he’s a dick don’t they?  – Not Wizbit Colombo he’s mega; the secret magician. (Although I quite like Jonathan Creek and he has a similar reison d’être.)

Also, it is said of jokes that like dissecting a frog, you kill them if you pull them apart to explain how they work. Why they say a frog and not a honey badger or red panda or Dugong is pure lack of imagination on their part.

If you dissected Richard Dawkins would that make him demystified and with an even more heighted beauty?
I reckon he’d be just as sexy as ever. Sexy dissected Dawkins.

Anyway I don’t think the show is going to be about that especially, obviously most shows cover the base foundation of Dawkins sexy dissected corpse, goes without saying.

For me I suppose it’s demystifying in the sense of making it all completely unglamorous, and nullifying the idea of achievement or success through comedy. Can’t you see how that will be an endless stream of belly laughs right there?
I mean Stuart said to me “We should do one of our hilarious joke filled comedy extrabaganza shows for the Camden fringe, they deserve it they’ve worked hard this year, what with the recession and all, and us fresh from our success at the 2008 Henley fringe an all. Whad yu fink gringo?”  Coz stu’s a bit racist sometimes, coz he’s from the streets.
Anyway, I said “Yeah, we could do it about an unglamorous, nullifying of the concept of any sense of achievement or success with-in human endeavour.”

“Bonza!” he said.

No. For me it’s about the idea of failure which is a comedy staple, but also a step back from that, giving up before you’ve even started I guess.

For example: I love fat people, no really, I know I relentlessly pick on them with various post ironic jokes that I do, but that’s just a supply and demand, freedom of markets thang.

I mean d’you honestly think Mr Morrison the supermarket man likes caster sugar, ‘course he fucking doesn’t but he has to sell it to keep his business going. If he suddenly got all self indulgent and arty and started going around all his store going get this fucking caster sugar out of my site, this stuff has been holding me back my entire life, it’s ruining me, this is why David Bowie doesn’t come to Morrison’s, this stuff is the reason Marlon Brando won’t do our fucking adverts, coz he knows I’m selling out, he knows I was locked in the basement as a child with nothing but packet upon packet of caster sugar for company, get it out, caster sugar, CASTER SUGAR, CASTER SUGAR, FUCK CASTER CASTER SUGAR.

If he did that, then the next day in Morrison’s, no one would come, would they?

He doesn’t even like Alan Sugar or the Jimmy Castor Bunch.

Anyway, where was I?

I love fat people; well obviously I find them physically repellent and generally tend to regard them as some kind of sub human species kinda like the Morlocks. But other than that I admire them, them and heroin addicts they are the same thing, people with low self esteem who have blocked out there self conscious nihilism using an unconscious tactic.

And now they are fucked, except that they are not because all they’ve got to worry about is ”O, I’m fat” or ”O, I’ve gotta get of the junk.” -” once I’ve done that everything will be all right just one more cake then I’ll quit, just a curly whirly to keep me going, then that’ll be it, I’ll quit and everything will be all right.”

Except that it wont because that one focus is actually more than the rest of us have, well me anyway, because once you’re back to “normal” again, then what? You’re stuck with the futility of endeavour, what is worth striving for and what is not. Do I simply do what I want, a hedonist, but what if what I enjoy is harmful to myself or others, taking drugs, overindulging cake, murdering, becoming a priest.

If you presume any objectivity with-in yourself, that you are right, then you are open to being wrong.

i.e. If you think YOU have found THE answer (politically, religious, whatever) if it is the prime directive then it must be worth defending, protecting, expunging, advancing, on pain of death. And if it is right then you have ultimate authority and you have become a despot. Thus you must be open to being wrong, in order to remain balanced.

Resulting in a state of paralysis thus you must simply do what thou whilst knowing that to someone somewhere it is wrong, except that the one thing that validates it, is your motive/ intention of it being right combined with your knowledge of it being wrong to/for others.

Surely such a train of thought has led to all the world’s evils. Depends on the “what thou whilst” element I suppose. Does it confirm to basic human rights? Maybe it doesn’t what is your mission? Are you the T2 do you just shoot them in the leg? Ends, means, etc.

Apathy must surely been immoral though, unethical. Immoral to stand by in society and be passive, you must contribute, you must desire, you must consume, you must strive to better yours and our lot.

Struggle, scrimp and save, learn and connive, dodge and dive, steal a few identities, forge a few wills, assassinate the French president, and you might get to the level of an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh.

From: www.mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au

Because civilisation is cyclical and someone in Dubai now is no better of than someone of equal wealth and status in ancient Greece or Rome, in-fact they’re probably better off because they didn’t have 24 hour news coverage, so no conscience of the ramifications of their stupid actions.

This civilization will crumble into the sea and we will enter an era of the Dark Age, like mad max, so we’ll all get cool haircuts awesome.

SO, apathy is not immoral if you do not believe in progress. And more importantly that supposed progress results in the relief of suffering.

Except that it does; medical anaesthetics etc. but a lack of apathy can equally jeopardize society, people can become fundamentalised and commit acts of terrorism etc.

At a human level societal progress is so fractionally small as to be overshadowed by personal goals, development, progress. So society should provide the opportunity and possibility for social mobility.-?

Western Democracy is Imposed-

To liberate the personal motive

so…..

Um I’m not saying that fat people don’t think that, but they probably think if they lost weight, it’d be better.

And it would their right only if they got morbid then they could loose it, hold up their old pair of trousers and get on telly, and if you’re on telly then everything is all right.

Yeah telly, the glamour, well the un-glamour really, I’m pretty sure telly is the same as stand-up. Being on telly does not make you famous, doing stand-up does not make you famous.

Photo by Brendan McKenna

This is how a stand-up gig goes:-
You go, you arrive, no one talks to you, you assume you are at the right thing and they know you’re on, they might tell you when you’re on if you’re lucky, you go on, and that’s it you go home, a girl might talk to you at the end if you are lucky.

I normally have to leave before the end; sometimes a girl would talk to me in the good old days when I was young and vital,

She’ll say

“Well done, I liked that bit you said about toast, it was good because I eat toast.”
And you’ll go

“Hmmm, um O thanks yeah, toast, yeah, it wasn’t really about toast, um remember that thing I did about Thatcher ‘Maggie, Maggie out out’ it was kind of about that.?
Anyway I’ve got to get my train bye.”

And then you try not to be sick on yourself on the way home.

And that’s comedy.

Four preview shows in June and July will build to the heady crescendo of August 9th and 10th at The Camden Fringe and then further scaffold onto the top of the crescendo some Edinburgh Fringe shows. CRESCENDO!