Lisa Clark interviews Denise Scott.
Have you used most/ a lot of the stories from your book as routines in the past?
No I haven’t. In fact the reason I wrote the book was because these were stories I had not been able to make work on stage! Then I go and decide to write a stage version of the book! Yes it appears I am indeed insane.
How different or similar was it to writing your stand up material and did having the material help you with remembering things to put in the book?
I found the process of writing the book a lot more enjoyable than writing stand up. I find stand up so difficult to write, always have, always will. The whole notion of writing gags and punch lines is totally unnatural for me. It’s just not the way I think or talk or for that matter view the world. But having time to tell a story where you can linger on details such as the colour of the pyjamas you were wearing without some one yelling “You’re not fucking funny” was liberating. However having spent the last twenty years of my life trying to turn family events into stand up routines has definitely meant I had an amazing stash of memories to draw on for the book.
I’m looking forward to the stage show that has come out of writing the book. What’s it been like trying to compress it all into an hour?
It was much harder than I ever imagined. In fact and this is seriously the truth I wrote seven versions of the show and tried each one out on random audiences or trusted peers before settling on one that seemed to work. Alan Brough was officially my director but he spent at least two solid weeks just script wrangling helping me to get a structure and stories together that worked on stage. Also much to my dismay it has required writing ‘gags’ to give the stories a bit more punch. (oh why is gag writing so darn hard?).
Does telling the stories out loud change them in anyway? Have you added / remembered anymore details?
My twenty three year old daughter came and saw the show and whilst she was absolutely cool about our family life being exposed in the book she found it incredibly ‘personal’ and weird listening to our story being told on stage. More than anything I guess I have made the stories a bit more theatrical; dressed them up a bit for the stage and I have brought to life some characters that didn’t really appear in the book – for example the ‘lonely’ sexy mothers who would flirt with John at his childrens circus workshops are a bit more developed than in the book.
Your son is doing music for the show, is your daughter doing an installation, or has her art become to expensive for you? :-)
My daughter’s art certainly gets talked about in the show! Sadly for her, being the mother of an installation artist has turned out to be comedy gold. Jordie has done the music for the show and has done a brilliant job especially since he had to create a broadway spectacular musical big band sound with a small budget, a makeshift ‘recording studio’ in our shed, and no knowledge whatsoever of what broadway musicals sounded like. (He is a country/roots dude by nature).
Are you looking forward to facing your audience with your raw honest tales, nervous about it or have you edited the most intimate out?
No, the most intimate is absolutely talked about; after all I do want to sell tickets! Also the sad parts are talked about (my mums alzheimers) and in fact it has been these intimate/sad moments that have proved to be the most rewarding for me to perform.
For moe info and booking details go to Denise Scott – Number 26