Beyond The Ridiculous interviews BCFM

Apr 11 2019

Holly Stoppit
Image credit: It's our Naomi Smyth, captured by Paul Blakemore

In the run up to Beyond The Ridiculous' 3-night run at The Wardrobe Theatre, two of our Fools, Naomi Smyth (pictured above) and Gen Davis (pictured below) were interviewed on 2 different shows on Bristol Community FM

First up is Naomi's interview with the hilarious and eloquent Sarah Slater, on BCFM's 'Stood Up', a show about the Bristol Stand up scene. 

Click here and select the show from the 10/4/2019 to hear Naomi talking about what we do in our training and performances from 15 mins 25:

"The training involves being alright with things not being perfect, being alright with being vulnerable in front of other people."

Here's Sarah Slater, describing her experience of watching the shows:

"Watching it feels like almost watching someone have a cathartic experience...and it needs to have the audience on side almost willing and breathing with them to allow them to exorcise whatever that internal fool, clown, ghost, memory, image might be...in that moment of inspiration to move in a certain way or hide or jump or fly or look or crouch, there's a lot of stillness and time." 

At 27 mins 30, Naomi talks about her other work as a film / immersive theatre buff, then at 34.35 it's back to Beyond The Ridiculous. Here's Naomi explaining how Fooling works:

“One of the things we're encouraged to do is start with how how we physically feel, once we stand in front of the audience... if you're feeling really tense, you're encouraged to play that and not cover it over and pretend that it's fine, because that's a good way to get through it and get past it and what's interesting is that often the audience love you for that because they're thinking “yeah, I would be too”"

At the end, Sarah Slater sums up Beyond The Ridiculous to a T: 

“Always engaging, often amusing, sometimes heart warming, sometimes a little bit sad.”

Holly Stoppit
Image credit: Gen Davis / photographer Joe Rosser

Next up, one of our newbie fools, Gen, went along to the Saturday Breakfast Show to chat with Steve. 

Gen: "We come onto stage with absolutely no plan."

Steve the DJ: "That's frightening to me!"

Gen goes on to explain how the training prepares the fools for their performance:

"The training is all about getting out of the rational mind, we start the day with meditation and check in and then moving and getting into our bodies, it's all very sensory play, Holly's really all about the senses. We're really trying to be true about how we're feeling."

Want to know more about how we do what we do? Have a listen  - click here and find the show from 13/4/2019 and start at 36 minutes.


If that tickles your fancy, click here to buy your tickets now! 

We're on for three nights, 19, 20 and 21 April. More info here.

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