’What about Crap At The Environment then? Sort of given up on it, have you?’
On the contrary. I admit the blog has been quiet to the point of non-existence, recently. However, I have been pouring my efforts into my first ever presentation of the Comedy Version Of Al Gore’s Lecture, which I trained for, some of you might remember, in Melbourne last September.
It’s taking place on March 29 - two weeks from now - in Melbourne Town Hall, which holds (in theory) about 1500 people. I don’t know how many will turn up, though it is almost free (well $10) because I’m not allowed to make a profit from it. Anyway. However many people appear, it’ll be a lot more bloody people than I ever envisaged I’d be doing a climate change lecture to. What a world.
As you can imagine, this is one of the scariest things I have ever taken on. I have on my hands an enormous amount of scientific material, most of it pretty dry and fact-laden, assembled by Al Gore over a period of more than two decades. I have to make it into something that’s interesting AND fun, while keeping the sciencey bits together, over the course of about 150 slides. Slides as in Power Point. I’ve never even used Power Point, let alone designed my own presentation based on an ex-Vice President’s.
I’ve never even operated a REAL slide projector.
So, I’m practicing and practicing, tinkering, hoping for the best. It’s a weird feeling because, unlike any other show I’ve done (with the possible exception of the 24-hour shows), there is no way of ’trying stuff out’ by slipping it into other shows - I think most gigs would go downhill if I tried to cram in a line like ’we are witnessing a collision between our civilization and the planet which we inhabit’. I’ve simply got to get my head down and hope very much it won’t be shit.
I’ll report back afterwards. Wish me luck.
And once it’s out of the way, I hope to refine the show and start doing it elsewhere in the UK and Australia. And of course, to go along with it, there’ll soon be the official Crap At The Environment book, which comes out soon.
If you’re interested, you can see a little advert for the show here:
http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/season/2008/specialevents/markwatsonearthsummit/
Goodness me.
MW