Tami Stone: The Edinburgh Interviews 2019
Who? Tami Stone
What? My Funny Bits
Where? theSpace @ Surgeons Hall – Theatre 3 (Venue 53)
When? 20:15
What are your feelings as you enter into this year’s Edinburgh Fringe season?
Mainly excitement…with just a tiny bit of pooing my pants. I can’t wait to start performing the show to an audience now. Me and my writer, Andrew Ludlam, were so pleased with how the preview went, there were plenty of lols from the audience which is all we wanted (and I was also just happy that I made all my quick changes and remembered my lines!). We’re also really looking forward to meeting people and seeing some of the other shows at the fringe, although our list is about ten meters long at the moment but we’re going to do our best to see as many as humanly possible.
What is the premise of your Edinburgh Show this year?
It’s a pick ‘n’ mix of quirky oddball characters performed by one woman and her bits. It’s our debut show and some of the characters include a gangster x factor reject with more attitude than talent and a serial dater called Dawn who likes to put pictures of her dates online for her friends to vote on. We hope our show will provide plenty of variety to appeal to all ages and to bring female character comedy firmly back on the map…although written by a man.
What is the biggest obstacle you faced while putting this show together?
We’ve had a pretty smooth ride really. No humungous obstacles! Luckily me and Andrew are too laid back to have any disagreements and most of the time we’re on the same page anyway which makes for a very easy life which we like. The only thing I can think of is that we did find that our show was too long near the start so we had to cut a sketch. So then we had to decide what sketch to cut which was quite hard saying goodbye to one of the characters but really pleased with the ones we’ve got left.
Has your attitude towards the fringe changed at all in recent years?
Definitely, I attended the Fringe for the first time last year and was blown away by the atmosphere up there. It’s unbelievable how many shows there are and I just loved how much variety there was. Also I’ve seen the other side of things this year, actually putting on a show myself with Andrew has really opened my eyes to how much work goes into it. As well as all the actual writing and performing side of putting on a show you’ve got all the behind the scenes things like venue, costume, props etc. and then there’s all the promoting and media side which I’ve never experienced before. You need endless amount of time and money (the bank balance is rather sore!) but I have to say the support has been amazing both from the fringe, my venue as well as other performers. It’s been such a great experience already.
Do you have any other Edinburgh show recommendations?
Yes I have to recommend 2Elfth Night as they have been so so supportive of our show and it looks like an absolute corker of a show. Also I’ve seen Purple Doors Production The Art of Skipping perform some of their songs and they were just beautiful and I can’t wait to see more. Finally Showstoppers I saw it twice last year and was just blown away by them, so impressive how they improvise a whole new show every night. Mind blown!
Where would you like to be in a year’s time?
The dream is to either be in a TV sitcom or to be touring My Funny Bits anywhere that wants me. Anything to be honest though I’m not fussy I just love performing comedy, you can’t beat the feeling you get when you make people laugh.