Interview with Michael Williams
You’ve been involved in the Comedy Festival over past years, in 2006 as a finalist in Raw and in 2007 as part of Comedy Zone. This year sees you embark on your first solo show. Have you found the process daunting? Have your past experiences prepared you at all?
Performing as a finalist at Raw prepared me to be an instant star, The Comedy Zone luckily cured me of all delusions. Mainly because our venue was a small glass box containing 20 people suspended over Mark Watson and his 300+ crowd at the Hi-Fi Bar. Putting a solo show together is rather scary especially when you have more colouring-in to do than an obsessive compulsive 4-year old. I’ve been drawing and colouring since December and will be up until the show starts, I think.
2008 saw you tour the UK supporting Josie Long. How did you find that experience?
Amazing. Absolutely amazing even though the tour was cursed – I was refused entry into England so I had to fly to the UK twice in a few days, someone threw a can out of their car window and it wrecked our hire car bonnet, Josie’s laptop was dropped and smashed and the hire car was impounded in Scotland. But aside from everything going wrong, Josie Long was a brilliant guide and she taught me bucketloads about comedy. It was the most fun I’ve ever had.
The visual medium dominates your work as a comedian. Do your have a background in the Fine Arts?
Oh Lord no! You know when people hear a musician has never had a music lesson in their life and everyone is surprised? I don’t think anyone in the world would be stunned to hear I have no formal arts training of any sort. I just have a degree in arts from the school of hard knock and a childhood of coloring-in expeirence from trying to win a year’s supply of Roll-Ups from ‘Saturday Disney’ every weekend.
The title of your show demonstrates an affection for weak puns. Should audiences prepare for an assault of such humour?
I cannot promise the ‘Nice ‘n’ Easel’ is the only weak pun in the show but I can promise that they are all performed gleefully. A large part of me loves bad, punny names for comedy shows and it’s not always a struggle the rest of me wins. Next year I promise to show some restraint. If you excuse me I’ll just go rip up my mock up poster for ‘Pop goes the Easel with Michael Williams’.
Tell us about Nice ‘n’ Easel.
Nice ‘n’ Easel is just 55 minutes of comedy – jokes, songs and stories, all done with pictures, 200 works of ‘art’. The best bit is that I hand to my audience 3D glasses and a whole portion of my show is in 3D! I don’t want to make the claim I’m the first comedian to harness the power of the 3rd dimension since I have seen a lot of people walk towards the audience and back again, but still for a comedian like me to squeeze in yet another gimmick, it’s pretty impressive.
Thanks to Michael Williams. For booking details go to Nice ‘n’ Easel