Saturday 15 July 2017

Dramaturgy 4: Thunderbards @ Edfringe 2017



Thunderbards perform 4nd at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe at Gilded Balloon, Dining Room from 2nd -27th Aug at 3:15pm. More info and tickets are available at



What was the inspiration for this performance?
The inspiration for this is failure. Our previous shows were about specific storylines, so this time we decided to take one theme, and allow the show to build from there. We wanted to write a show where the storyline begins to gradually emerge throughout the show, instead of being explicitly laid out at the start.


Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas? 
It definitely is. This show of ours that we're performing explores the theme of failure, which is the first time we've built an hour around one thematic idea. Comedy allows people to discuss subjects in a sensitive way that normally wouldn't be addressed - it's not necessarily the answer, and it won't change the world, but it's important in opening a dialogue.

How did you become interested in making performance?
We were involved in our university's theatre society, which didn't provide much in the way of onstage laughter, so we decided to come up with short sketches and eventually fleshed it out into a show. I think our interests always lay in performance, but we were aware there wasn't really any scripted comedy at our university.

Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?
One of us will usually come up with the loose concept of a sketch. Then, as a pair we'll flesh it out. If we're stuck for jokes, then we each have a collection of miscellaneous jokes and one-liners that can go anywhere in a show, so we aim to put all of those in throughout the script.

Does the show fit with your usual productions?
People who have seen us before will hopefully know what to expect, in that we'll be telling a lot of very off-beat jokes, where the punchlines and outcomes are all tricky to predict. It's a bit more tech-heavy than former productions of ours. We've bought a projector screen and everything.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?
We want the audience to laugh, but I think we want them to remember it as well. We both enjoy comedy shows more retrospectively when jokes and scenes come back to us days and weeks later. If not, it'll be ideal if they love it but completely forget everything that happened, and so come and see it again. Gotta shift them tickets.


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