Ed Rapley

I'm am going to be presenting 'The Middle Bit' at the Tobacco Factory's Prototype. This involves me improvising with 8 character prompted by audience suggestions. It will be much fun!

Last Saturday I popped along to my Friend Birgit's leaving do, it was at Spike Island, a gallery and studio complex and bar in Bristol. I had a show the next day so i wasn't drinking, which I can perhaps thank for my unusually observant frame of mind. What did I notice?

Art has the most beautiful girls.

I have just come back from performing my show at the Tobacco Factory, it got a great response, and i am happy as larry with how it went. The new material and style of doing things went great. I'm liking the move towards greater improvisation. Thanks to Mike the tech guy, Ali for having me and Holly for making me do it better.

I have just done my first FM radio spot, for Original Bristol, we looked at few stories from the papers and chatted a little about 10 Ways to Die on Stage. http://www.originalbristol.com/index.php

Watching Iain Morrison and Leiza McLeod's "Gimme the Beat Girls" last night at Prototype has made me think. The show presents a series of poems by female Beat poets, which are sung whilst the two performers respond to each poem with props and actions. The female Beat poets have been a marginalised and largely forgotten part of the Beat narrative that focuses upon the genius of the lone, rebellious male. The poems themselves are full of genius and like much Beat poetry they really need to be spoken, better still performed, to be brought fully to life.

This will be a big old ramble of a post, there is a whole bunch of stuff on my mind, so here goes...

I'm sitting at a desk in the large bay window of the master bedroom of the flat where I'm staying during the Edinburgh Fringe. I feel like a proper artist. I'd like to be performing more now. But instead today I'll be volunteering at the Forest Fringe and see some friends from Bristol's shows this evening.

It has been an emotional day, with no less than three appearances on the Forest Fringe stage. First trying out material for my brand new show: The Middle Bit (working title). This went well, but I didn´t strike the right tone and it felt a little hashed and false. There were some good turns from Mamuru Iriguchi, who i have mentioned before in my worst nightmare awards, a choreographer/dancer whose name i shall ammend to this post and The team.

It has been a tio of triumphs so far and a another potential hat-trick of wonder to come. All the mini 1 to 1 shows have gone brilliantly, from the sneaky to the down right athletic in The Face Game, on to the unrelentingly abstact clown/oracle/spaceman wonders of The First Thing, and finally the joy and wonder of giving people free reign in Your Turn.

Tomorrpw will be a massive day for me, i'll be performing 3 time first a scratch of the middle bit, then a showing of 10 ways to Die on Stage, then following the feedback from the scratch an improved version of the middle bit.

After a nine hour train journey thanks to slightly damp tracks just outside Edinburgh I arrived at the flat that i'll be sharing with some of the other performers from the Forest Fringe. Fellow Bristolians and Residence members action hero are here too, they've just finished their little run and i'm just about to start mine tonight. Already I have seen the excellent Paper Cinema and a funny/blokey stand up gig by Daniel Kitson and friends.