Wednesday 31st July 2013

Right now thousands of comedians are descending on Edinburgh for tomorrow’s commencement of the world’s biggest arts festival. Some of JUICE’s favourite comedians will be performing at the Fringe Festival, and throughout August we’ll be able to bring you exclusive blogs from comedians reporting behind the scenes!

Speaking of Edinburgh, we’re really proud of the Edinburgh Festival Previews we were able to put on in Stafford over the last three months. All the comedians who performed are no doubt going to achieve great things at this years Festival. Look out for Tony Jameson, Michael J Dolan, Katie Mulgrew, Phil Ellis, Kiri Pritchard-McLean and Gein’s Family Giftshop, as they’ve got bright and exciting futures ahead of them!

Monday night sees the start of a brand new chapter for JUICE Comedy, as we move our monthly New Act / New Material Show to Number 15. We’ve got some great things lined up for Monday night, including the release of our JUICE Comic Strip. We’ve collaborated with Stafford artist Jade Thompson to create a series of newspaper-style comic strips. We released one of these online earlier in the year. This time around, however, JUICE decided to do some guerrilla/zine-style publishing. The small black-and-white comics are a simple concoction, dreamed up by our imaging & design whiz CODENAME_U81K.

The comics are absolutely free and will be available as of Monday from Stafford businesses such as Number 15, Joxer Brady’s and Stafford’s very own comic book shop Too Fat Goblinz. Make sure you look out for them!

Strip #1

Ladies & Gentlemen the debut of JUICE Comix!

The ‘Adventures’ of Rob & Neil

Art by Jade Thompson

 

Wednesday 19th December 2012

JUICE suffered some technical difficulties this week when we were left without internet connection for days, which meant that Episode Two of JUICE News didn’t get posted. Since it’s a topical web-show, we won’t be posting it a week late. There’s nothing worse than comedians telling old jokes that nobody cares about anymore. But we’ll be shooting a new episode this week so look out for that later in the week!

Last week we finished off our comedy year by hosting a special show for Paul Savage. Regular readers will know that Paul Savage has been working with JUICE Comedy for quite a few years now, and he’s the Resident Compere for our shows at The Gatehouse Theatre. Paul has been a stand-up comic for over five years now, and has crafted his very first full-length comedy show called ‘A Cheerful Shambles’. JUICE was in audience when this show debuted at the Birmingham Comedy Festival earlier this year and snapped up the chance to put the show on in Stafford for our comedy fans here.

This is the first full-length comedy show that JUICE has had the opportunity to put on, so we decided to keep the guest list exclusive rather than leave it open to the public. We advertised the show just to our loyal JUICE Followers and got a great response the real fans of comedy that live in Stafford. There was a great atmosphere in Number 15 on Thursday night as the audience was made up of people who have supported JUICE Comedy all year round.

The show itself was brilliant. Paul Savage really matured and evolved as a performer during the hour-long set. Paul’s rambling journey through a series of embarrassing life events really took root with the audience. Crucially, Paul was able to do what all great headlining comics should be able to do. Namely, create spontaneous moments of comedy gold with the audience, moments that exist separately from the planned material but don’t detract from it. These are one-off moments that the audience can see and feel are happening spontaneously and just for them. Not only are these moments fun, but they elevate the rest of the planned material in the show by adding a real truth to the routines and jokes. Paul connected with the audience by showing the truth of his character . . . that of a very silly, neurotic and borderline autistic man with a small mouth.

It was fantastic to see Paul, who does the majority of his work for JUICE as a compere and MC, hold an audience for a full-hour and get belly laughs and applause-breaks from them throughout. After the show, Rob Halden brought Paul back onto the stage to do a Q&A session with the audience, which allowed Paul to go through another ten minutes of routines he’d left out of the main show.

We received a plethora of great feedback from audience members, and it was a lovely way for JUICE to close the calender year. But even as 2012 draws to a close, we’re busy making BIG plans for 2013! We’re looking for more ways we can make you laugh next year with some brand new projects. Earlier in the year the J-blog announced that our very own comic-strip will be starting in 2013. Check out a sneak peak of JUICE Comix!

This week JUICE commenced plans to bring a host of original articles and blogs from some of your favourite JUICE comedians right here to this very WordPress site!  We’re giving an open-platform to these very talented comedians to create funny and original content exclusively for YOU, our beloved JUICE Followers! Two names attached to the project so far include the hilarious Jayne Edwards and the hysterical Kiri Pritchard-McLean!

So whilst we’re winding down for 2012 don’t think there’ll be a lack of updates here, or at juicecomedy.co.uk We’ll still have the weekly Podcast show with Rob & Neil and (technology allowing) a new episode of JUICE News for you to digest before the New Year.

To all of you out there who have come along and enjoyed one of our comedy shows in 2012 we want to say thank you for supporting grass-roots comedy and local entertainment in Stafford. Onward & upward for 2013!