Writer Patrick Nash brings his play Funny Guy to the Edinburgh Fringe this summer.
“A twisted exploration of the fragile underpinnings of love, friendship, and ambition. As two couples chase relevance and meaning, a towering neon marionette stalks the stage, challenging them to confront their greed, desires, and identity.”
Where: Greenside at George Street
When: 2-10, 12-17, 19-24 Aug
Ticket link: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/funny-guy
Patrick tells us more about the play.
What are you most looking forward to at Fringe?
I’m so excited to be bringing this show to the Fringe!
This festival is renowned for its “anything goes” ethos, which makes it the ideal venue for me.
My work is off beat and edgy, strong, but risky. So, not everyone’s cup of tea.
I’m looking forward to connecting creatively with like-minded, fellow travelers.
Tell me about Funny Guy – where did the idea come from and what’s it all about?
The idea for Funny Guy came to me years ago, when my wife and I were in that early to mid career phase of life.
At that time, our social milieu was made up mostly of other couples and young families who were navigating the uncharted waters of career and family.
Most of my contemporaries grew up in traditional families with stay-at-home wives and breadwinner husbands.
My generation was unconsciously blazing a brand new trail for the new normal of two-earner households.
And for some reason, in my crowd, all the guys were just too weird, or rough around the edges, or alcoholic to hold “real jobs” so our wives worked in the corporate world while we did freelance work, or carpentry, or production work, or started our own “businesses.”
It was a generation of useless men, clinging to the preadolescent dreams they’d pieced together from the lyrics of pop music and themes from after-school sit com reruns on TV.
Somehow we thought we could make a go of life with that. Fortunately, our wives knew better.
There’s a neon marionette alongside the actors. What do you think audiences will make of it, and have you based it on anyone in particular?
OK, the neon. This is literally a deus ex machina or in this case maybe demon ex machina is a better word for it.
One of the things I try to do with my writing is make the audience’s head spin.
Audiences are defensive, they are always looking for excuses to stop thinking about what’s on stage, they want to dismiss the play as soon as possible, thinking “…oh yeah, I get it, this is just another play about whatever… been there done that.”
As soon as the audience feels assured that they know the basic limits of what’s going to be presented on stage, they can simply drift off and start thinking about where to go for drinks after the show.
The audience needs to be tricked into paying attention. There’s no other way. I have no illusions about attention spans. I know we all have a lot to think about these days and my biggest fear is to waste the audience’s time.
My strategy is to change the rules of the game so quickly and so often that the audience has no choice but to pay attention or be left behind.
There are trap doors everywhere. By the time the neon appears, the audience is ready to believe anything. Even trash-talking neon marionette.
How would you say the American Fringe differs to the one in the UK?
Well, first of all, the UK Fringe is open to any and all people who want to present. The American Fringe festivals are selective.
My work has been rejected from every theatre festival, film festival, script writing contest, literally everything where there’s a jury or an acceptance process, I am rejected.
The only people who actually embrace my work are the audiences. It’s that feeling of connecting with an audience in a meaningful way that keeps me going.
What’s next after this run?
I hope Funny Guy gets some positive reviews and has a future run somewhere.
I’m also turning my attention back to some of the musicals I’ve written. I have a vague plan to produce a musical in an abandoned retail space, either a mall or one of the many urban storefronts left vacant since the 2020 shutdown.
I’m developing the concept of “performative retail” which is an, immersive experience where the audience enters a “store” or in this case, a “clinic” and then they are invited into a “speakeasy” theater through a secret door.
In the theater, there’s a full-on musical that relates to the retail experience.
In this case, the musicals are about health care and pharmaceutical hegemony, so they relate to the “clinic” through which the audience has entered.
I have written three musicals about this theme, Beulah Land, Oh No! My Leg! And Irritable Bowel Syndrome, the Musical.