{"id":1500,"date":"2012-08-31T15:28:26","date_gmt":"2012-08-31T15:28:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raphshirley.com\/blog\/?p=1500"},"modified":"2012-11-09T00:19:56","modified_gmt":"2012-11-09T00:19:56","slug":"edinburgh-2012-summary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raphshirley.com\/blog\/2012\/08\/31\/edinburgh-2012-summary\/","title":{"rendered":"Edinburgh 2012 summary"},"content":{"rendered":"

I got two reviews. One was one star<\/a>. One was four stars<\/a>. That pretty much sums up the audience responses. Average star rating was therefore 2.5, half a star down on last year, but I got 2 more stars in total. Yippee! I only need a two star review and a five star one and I’ve got the whole set (I suspect the two might come easier than the five). Also, not a single person this year threatened to beat me up shouting “it’s not fucking funny, like your fucking act”. Not a single one! I am progressing. No-one said “I find this deeply offensive”, and no-one said “How long have you been doing this?”. There is a part of me that thinks that means I’m actually regressing in some sense. “When you’re a misanthrope, the praise of others is effectively scorn” – Raph Shirley, in his critically ignored 2011 Edinburgh show.<\/p>\n

What I did have, was a lot of walkouts. I had about five shows go seriously southward, frequently involving mass walkouts. I don’t mind a single mass walkout, but little dribs and drabs throughout the act is depressing. But listen yeah, when you are a great artist like me, people will sometimes be confused. They know not what they do. “Let me tell you about another so-called ‘wicked’ guy. He had long hair and some wild ideas and he didn’t always do what other people thought was right. And that man’s name was… I forgot… but the point is… I forgot… Marge, you know who I’m talking about. He used to drive that blue car.” – Homer Simpson.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
\nFigure 1.<\/strong> Self portrait at end of festival (a copy of a Matthew McConville<\/a> painting).<\/em><\/p>\n

* * *<\/strong><\/p>\n

A sample of quotes:<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Raph Shirley is not funny… [He is] an unpleasant, smug, petty-minded, delusional geek who thinks he can make it as a stand-up.” – Tristram Fane Saunders, absurdly named reviewer for the absurdly titled BroadwayBaby.com.<\/p>\n

“Tristram Fane Saunders is a mad, pathetic, evil, and wormlike weasel, who may well hit kittens in their adorable little faces, and doesn’t understand proper use of conjunctions in lists… Petty!? Would a petty man write a rigorous refutation of an accusation of pettiness?! Huh?!?! Would they Tristram, you dreadful man?” – Raph Shirley, cool dude.<\/p>\n

‘ “Raph Shirley is… funny” – Tristram Fane Saunders, BroadwayBaby.com.’ – Future press release for Raph Shirley.<\/p>\n

No, but seriously, I wish him well.<\/p>\n

“This has the potential to be fantastic alternative character comedy… a lot of promise, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s certainly original.” – Liam McKenna, FringeGuru.com.<\/p>\n

“Liam McKenna is the finest reviewer the world has ever known.” – Raph Shirley.<\/p>\n

“[laughs<\/em>] That isn’t even minimum wage! That’s less than a tramp gets.” – Shop worker on hearing how much money I took that day.<\/p>\n

“Hi, we saw you last year and came back. You were the best thing we saw on the Free Fringe.” – nice person after show.<\/p>\n

When thinking about reviews and reviewers never forget the following fact: the film Love Actually was generally positively reviewed.<\/strong><\/p>\n

* * *<\/strong><\/p>\n

I had one catastrophe of a show (last year, I had about five), when I asked two people to leave because they were “annoying me”. No, but seriously, they were<\/em> really annoying me though. The atmosphere in the room instantly fell to the floor and I never got them back. I’ve made a graph:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Figure 2.<\/strong> Vibe verses time during final show when I asked some people to leave.<\/em><\/p>\n

* * *<\/strong><\/p>\n

Love to all my fellow humans (-1), <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Non-cynical non-ironic PS:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thank you to Peter Buckley Hill and everyone else at PBH’s Free Fringe 2012. Thanks also to the extremely friendly and helpful staff at The Globe Bar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I got two reviews. One was one star. One was four stars. That pretty much sums up the audience responses. Average star rating was therefore 2.5, half a star down on last year, but I got 2 more stars in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[103],"tags":[105,93],"class_list":["post-1500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-raphshirley-com-live","tag-edinburgh","tag-live"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raphshirley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raphshirley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raphshirley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raphshirley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raphshirley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.raphshirley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1500\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raphshirley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raphshirley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raphshirley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}