A particularly good night at the Worcester Speakeasy last night with, as always, a great flash story from Roz Leavens and some powerful poetry from Daniel Burton and Wesley Rolston. I gather Wesley is relatively new to the Spoken Word scene but his delivery and stage presence is superb. However, they got my name wrong on the flyer (yet again!) despite putting "Burr" in huge letters at the end of the email asking for a slot. Still, I'll let it slide since they call me a "master of deep, dark works from the flash fiction master." I guess that makes me a super-master, or something. (*blushes*).
I read "BobandJane" from the Ugly Stories, one that while on the longer side (7 mins in its most edited form) usually goes down well. It was a weird one, though - the audience was split so around half of them were in their 60s and 70s and half were in their 20s to 40s. I noticed that in the spots where there are usually big laughs, there were just two or three of the younger people laughing, but not the almost comedy-set laughs it usually gets. And when I finished, instead of the usual polite but hearty applause you get at these things, there was a few moment's silence before people started applauding. At first I thought it had actually bombed, but then I realised as people actually cheered (!) and started applauding that it had been an almost stunned silence. The poet who came on after me was all, "Well, how do I follow that?" and I had 5 or 6 people come up to me afterwards saying how much they enjoyed it and how they thought it would go down well in some of the more raucous spoken word events in Brum. But despite the very positive response I got from the younger half, I got the feeling the older group were confused or disappointed or wanted to hear more conventional fare.
Still, I enjoy Speakeasy and will undoubtedly do a few nights there next year. But now it is really time I start branching out into Birmingham and the Permission to Speak night in Stourbridge.
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