Dramaturgy Eclipsed: Dominic Holland @ Edfringe 2017

Dominic Holland’s new stand up show ‘Eclipsed’ will be at the Voodoo Rooms Ballroom at 4.40pm for the month of August on the Free Fringe.

What was the inspiration for this performance?

Being honest, to announce to the comedy world that Dominic Holland is still a professional comedian and that he can still rock a room. 

Is performance still a good space for

the public discussion of ideas? 

Not if these ideas are the same old narrow liberal views that the thought police will permit. This is merely preaching to the converted and usually amounts to nothing more than virtue signalling, which is the new way of expressing the classic mantra, ‘do as I say, not as I do’. 

The challenge, therefore, is being brave and clever enough to expand this sterile debate – but few comedians are brave or clever enough to do so.   

How did you become interested in making performance?

Not sure if I make a performance. It is more fluid than something manufactured. I don’t

have a character. It is just me on stage, albeit a heightened version of myself but I am largely truthful on stage and so I guess, more exposed as a performer looking for laughs and affirmations.

Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

Like all shows, it is always best to have a hinge on which ‘funny material’ can hang. I have always played on being an everyman. A little man being worn down by life. And this lends itself naturally to this show, Eclipsed with what has happened/ing to my eldest son. I am a comedian of a certain pedigree and a certain level and he is a movie star and this is fortunate hook for a show and a great hinge. I am expecting this will be my best and most fun fringe show. Certainly, it is my fringe show that I am most looking forward to anyway.

Does the show fit with your usual production

Yes it does, because it is my funniest material corralled in to a show but the difference being that I imagine that most people coming to my show will know about my son being Spider-Man and might have even seen the new film – and I am sure that this will bring a great vibrancy and energy that I can feed off. 

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

Hilarity. Stand-up is really a unique art form. A film is funny if people laugh a couple of times. But when did you last see a film where the audience laugh out loud and all the way through? But this is what stand-up can do and what happens when I get a room full of people. It sounds naff to say it – but I make people roar with laughter and mostly at themselves – because my life is their life too (albeit without having Spidey as a son, obviously).