Industry Insights – Interview with a stand up Comedian

Philip Simon – Comedian, Actor, Writer

WINNER: Jewish Comedian of the Year 2015
WINNER: Lastminute Comedy/Kill for a Seat Comedian of the Year 2015

For the past few years Philip has been gigging throughout the UK, with appearances in New York, Scandinavia, Europe the Middle East and New Zealand.

He has been heard on BBC Radio 2 and 4Xtra as part of the BBC New Comedian Search. As well as featured roles in TV programmes including My Family (BBC) and Any Human Heart (Channel 4) Philip has worked as a rehearsal guest on BBC TV’s Mock the Week and Taskmaster for Dave. He also appears to be prominently featured in a steady stream of TV commercials.

‘Philip Simon is never less than hilarious’ (The Stage)
‘He’s good…not very good, but he’s good!’ (Kate Copstick)
‘Solid, strong stand-up. A Comedy Store act…Definitely one to be reckoned with.’ (Hils Jago, Amused Moose)

My whole life I wanted to be an actor, but after about 10 years I was ready for a new challenge and so I finally took everyone’s advice and had a go at stand up comedy. I did an 8 week course at The Comedy School in Camden, after which I performed in a showcase, which was the first gig I ever did. It was the scariest and the best thing I’ve ever done. From there I started gigging on the open mic and eventually the professional circuit.

A comedy night can see me compering (hosting), or performing anything from 5 minutes to 30 minutes of original material. As you progress through the industry, this will depend on your level and how well the promoter knows you. As you build a profile you’re more likely to be booked to headline a night as it’s your name that could sell tickets.

I love my job, but it’s not a very glamorous lifestyle. I spend a lot of time on trains and in my car, often driving hundreds of miles to perform 20 minutes of comedy, before driving back home again. Of course, the best gigs are those where the fee isn’t eaten away by the travel/accommodation, but for me that would mean only gigging in London, and to be honest there are better gigs and better audiences once you leave the Capital. And when you get a great audience laughing at jokes you’ve written, there’s really no feeling like it!

Unlike acting, you don’t need an agent to get gigs, so whilst I spend a lot of my time writing my own material, I also spend a great deal of time doing some admin. This is done by emailing bookers/promoters, responding to Facebook posts and networking with friends and colleagues on the circuit. I’ve also started to run my own gigs, mainly fundraisers for school PTAs and Synagogues, as well as a professional comedy club close to where I live. This allows me to engage with more comedians as well as compering the gigs myself, without travelling too far from home.

For anyone thinking about going into comedy, my advice would be to go and watch as much live comedy as you can. Find your local club, and go there as often as you can. See as many different acts as possible, and if you end up seeing the same acts, don’t worry, just see how they’ve developed. If you see an act you don’t like, don’t brush them off as “terrible”. We all have bad days at the office. Check them out online, see them at other gigs, and learn from what you did/didn’t like.

Once you’re on the circuit, just get to know everyone. We’re all lovely and very approachable. It’s a very small industry, so please talk about the people they’ve met, so don’t be an idiot. Don’t nick material and don’t make anyone not want to work with you. It’s an amazing industry, and amazing to think this is what I’m able to do for a living.

Website: www.philipsimon.co.uk
Twitter: @PhilipsComedy

Industry Insights – Interview with the Principal of Stagecoach Farnborough

I love being principal of Stagecoach Performing Arts School in Farnborough.

You just never know what is going to happen form one lesson to the next. Being responsible for up to sixty children in one go could be seen as very stressful. But reality is, all the kids in the school are amazing characters. Some characters that want to build on their performing arts skills and others who want to improve their confidence and self-esteem. It is a great mix of characters that works very well.

The kids are the most important part of the school, then the parents who invest in our expert teaching and then the teachers themselves. The teachers are so important to every Stagecoach school, it is them who have to keep up the enthusiasm and energy that makes Stagecoach such a great success.

With teachers moving on and taking on family commitments I recently advertised for teaching posts for the first time in many years. There was huge response – everyone seems to want to be a Stagecoach teacher. It was a tough decision whittling it down to six candidates to interview for two disciplines. It was not an easy decision to choose.

 The latest term has been busy, but also a very high profile too. As well as making every day decisions dealing with marketing, finances and dealing with enquiries I also need to raise the profile the school. To ensure everyone knows what Stagecoach has to offer and where it can lead.

 A year ago I met Dee Anderson, she is daughter of Sylvia and Gerry Anderson who created the iconic Thunderbirds, Stingray and Captain Scarlet TV shows way back in the sixties and seventies.

I was a big fan of those shows when I was a kid, even as a grown up! Dee had written a show especially for Stagecoach with a throwback to those iconic shows. I agreed that Farnborough would perform the show, but it turns out that Stagecoach Farnborough will be putting on the first ever performance of this show – A world premier no less!

 It was my job as principal of the school to secure a show for the Christmas term 2017. To meet the daughter of one of my childhood heroes and work with her was a great experience. As this was going to be a ‘World Premier’ I wrote to the local press who started to take an interest. Although it was a long shot, I wrote to TV companies too. It paid off, one local channel came to film and broadcast the piece about Stagecoach Farnborough (although they said it was in Aldershot!) and broadcast it on ‘That’s Hampshire’. It’s still on their You Tube even now. The BBC have since contacted me and are due to come down to film and broadcast the dress rehearsal of Dee Anderson’s show. The fact that she is daughter of such iconic TV producers is certainly attracting the media attention so my work contacting them is starting to pay off.

 TV coverage is the icing on the cake for our Stagecoach lessons. I have been principal at Farnborough for fourteen years and those years have just flown by. I live in Farnborough so it is great see students growing up and being successful in many different fields using the life skills and confidence they’ve built whilst they have been at Stagecoach. Many of them have gone on to study performing arts at college and university. Students from Farnborough have starred in Hollyoaks, performed in a BBC sit com, appeared in ; Shrek the Musical’, feature in many pantomimes and shows. They have also performed at Shaftesbury Theatre – home of award winning ‘Motown – the Musical’ at Her Majesty’s Theatre – Home of ‘Phantom of the Opera’ and sung on stage with an X Factor finalist. It all makes getting up early every Saturday morning very much worth while.

 PS. The most important thing after the teachers is the bell – the school just would not start without it!

https://www.stagecoach.co.uk/farnborough

What People Think I Do…

Industry Insights – Interview with a Stage Hypnotist

“Paul needs to learn to sit down, and stop talking” – That’s pretty much what came back on my school reports the whole way through. “Ask him to write something and you will be lucky to get three paragraphs, ask him to TALK about it and he’ll never stop” – That’s another…

 

When I was at school, the teachers always complained about the fact I wouldn’t sit down and shut up. For them, it was going to ruin my life!

 

…OH REALLY?

 

Nowadays, I am an actor, a radio presenter, and a hypnotist! All I do is talk for a living. Sometimes I sit down, but that is only when I feel like it.

 

Don’t get me wrong, I now see the benefits that would have been available to me now if I had learned to focus in my English Literature, or science classes, but I am here to tell you that it is not the end of the world if you can’t.

 

The only catch is – you have to be REALLY good at what you do!

 

LEARNING HYPNOSIS

 

When I was 11, I saw hypnosis on TV, and decided that if I learned how to do THAT, then I could rule the world. I went out and got every book I could find on it, and within a year, I had my first victim in the school playground. And when I say victim, I mean it! I had only read on how to GET hypnosis, and not what to do afterwards. Nowadays I know exactly what is what, but then I didn’t, and I panicked. I was in the schoolyard, and thought I was going to be kicked out of school for it.

 

Anyway – Through the years, I have learned how to use hypnosis for entertainment, in big shows and small. I have learned how to use hypnosis to get rid of fears an phobias for people, as well as bad habits. I have also learned how to use hypnosis to let people realise that they are far more capable than they every dreamed they could be.

 

OFFICE LIFE OR ENTERTAINMENT?

 

If you want an easy life, then find an office job, and do it well so they promote you, and keep moving up, and earning more, so you can go on all the holidays you have dreamed of, and buy all the toys you want (yes, I still call things toys). There is nothing wrong with living that way, and many people can have a good life.

 

I spent 15 years in an office before deciding that it wasn’t for me.

 

But if you want the life YOU want, doing the things YOU want to do, you have to be GREAT at it!

 

OVERNIGHT SUCCESS

 

You may think that X-Factor will be your way to becoming a household name, but so do thousands of others. You will have to be better than every one of them! There is an old saying – “It takes a long time to become an overnight success”

 

If you want to be an entertainer, I can promise you that it will give you some of the BEST experiences of your life, and some of the WORST! When I started out, I didn’t know what I was doing. I thought that I could just walk away from office work, and be paid for being the great hypnotist I am. Looking back on it, I didn’t have any business sense.

 

I knew I was good. People in the hypnosis industry at the top levels knew I was good! But the public didn’t. If they don’t know who you are, then they won’t ask for you – it’s as simple as that.

 

PETER KAYE

 

Some of you will know the comedian Peter Kaye as being one of Britain’s best loved – but I remember seeing him on TV when he was just starting out, and he got almost nothing back from the audience… Now, he probably doesn’t have a free day in his calendar. It’s not that he’s any funnier than he used to be, it’s just that more people know about him, so more people WANT to see him. The audience he was performing for back before he was famous were used to comedy that showed off how intelligent it was.

 

But he kept going – and that’s why he’s the success he is now.

 

PITFALLS

 

You will find hard times ahead, because that is just how life is. It’s not fair, or right, it just IS. If you quit, you will never reach your goal.

 

Right now, I am in a good place with my job. It doesn’t feel like work at all! But that is because I have learned how to do what I need to do to let me keep doing the job I love. When I started out, I was so bad at it, one winter I literally had to choose between heating and eating! I had spent money one month that I was going to need the next!

 

But now I am doing what I should have done from the start. I have organised myself. It may not sound like fun, but it’s the thing that lets you HAVE fun. If I wasn’t organised, I would miss work opportunities. That would mean missing work.

 

ADVANTAGES

 

The better you get, the more people will want to see you. Then you can charge more. That give you two options:

1) Do less work for the same money

2) Keep working as much as you can and earn more

Whichever one you choose is all down to you as a person.

 

When you prove yourself in entertainment, you then get the chance to get an agent, or a manager. They will find the work for you, and take a cut of your earnings. This way you have to spend less time organising, and more time DOING what you do…

 

REMEMBER

 

Although it sounds great – you have to do the work in the first place. Without that, you won’t get anywhere. Jennifer Lawrence is a well known actress these days, but look into how much work she put into getting her early roles. Mark Ruffalo worked as a waiter for years before he finally got his first real role. And that role? The Hulk in Marvel’s “Avengers Assemble”

 

It doesn’t get handed to you on a plate – if it does, BEWARE! Someone could be expecting more of you in return than you are ready to give…

 

Every actor, magician, and entertainer got where they are by hard work – but they now have the life they dreamed of.

 

If you want to take the step – be brave!

Guest Blogger – Ex Student Christopher Hoare

This December I shall be graduating from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama with a Masters degree in Music Theatre. No doubt as I cross the stage of the Royal Festival Hall to receive my award, I shall cast my mind back – almost to the day – 10 years ago when I first auditioned for a Collingwood production.

Three months into my first year of secondary school education, I had no idea how the following months of ‘gruelling’ rehearsals and performances would shape my life and career. Oliver! (2007) was my first real exposure to Drama at Collingwood and I have never forgotten the friendliness and support of many of the cast and crew. It has been rare to experience such a tight ensemble among an entire  creative company in many environments in which I have since worked, but whether I was being fitted into costume by Mrs Cooley or making a quick change out of it (or even having my hair dyed!), I certainly ‘considered my-self’ part of the Collingwood Drama family.

Ask me today when or why I decided to become a professional actor and Collingwood is the answer.

During the following seven years at the school, the annual production was the highlight of the year. Even before a show ended, the gossip and rumours about which show would feature the next year were circulating.

By the time I left the school, I had been everything from  a baby-faced down-and-out to the voice of a giant man-eating alien plant although it was during my GCSE and A-Level Drama studies where I truly developed as a performer.

Drama at Collingwood was not just another lesson. Often the style of working generated an atmosphere rarely experienced or demanded of other disciplines. Much like a repertory theatre, the class became a company and developed bonds of trust and support. Classes inspired confidence and discipline, fostering creativity and individuality helping us develop as people and performers.

The Drama studio was often a hub and for those of us eager to go above and beyond, spending many hours after school and during break times, working together to explore the limits of everybody’s individual creative potentials. This is what made Drama special because everyone had an opportunity to try their hand at new skills and find their niche as well as develop themselves as confident people.

Studying Drama was tough, gritty and at times exhausting, yet its rigorous demands ensured that each student push themselves, physically and mentally to succeed.

Our analysis of Golding’s The Lord of the Flies introduced us to the destructive power of gender stereotypes and male aggression in society whilst learning about female oppression and hegemonic patriarchal structures in Ibsen’s A Dolls House. Through projects which explored genetic engineering and mental health we were educated about social issues and imbalances which are still widely prevalent today. In study and performance we opened discussion of certain taboos to better understand the world and increase awareness of our responsibilities to promote conversation and change.

The Christmas Soirée was always a delight, giving us the opportunity to share our performances with an audience and demonstrate how we developed working with texts and movement to engage with these complex debates. As much as I enjoyed the process and hours of hard work put into preparing and rehearsing a show, nothing beats the rush of adrenaline, nerves and excitement of being part of an ensemble or taking lead on stage in communion with an audience.

Of course Drama at Collingwood was really special because it was the child of a rare character. I have never met a woman as lively, ferocious, or charitable as Jane Roberts. Her spirit and leadership of the subject was an inspiration and the commitment she gave to her students was unparalleled. Her willingness to foster young talent and fearlessness to deliver tough love where due was a guiding influence throughout school. Her passion for theatre, enthusiasm and creative drive, cast any doubt from my mind that I wanted to act and she has often been the voice in my head throughout my education and training, guiding my steps. I doubt I would have developed the discipline and resilience to survive and become a professional in a competitive industry without her support and faith from day one.