A nice chat with the Dog Eared Collective: Edinburgh Fringe

 

We've got a brand new show called You're Better Than This. It does what it says on the tin, it's about smelling better, acting taller, getting yourself a library card, all the comedy ingredients of greatness. That includes teaching an audience member to street dance by the end of it so that's a bonus.

 

We've had some funky people, actually. It's two teenagers reenacting Street Dance The Movie on stage. It's a lot of fun to play a lot of our comedy is combining our stand up techniques and improvisation so it's always a lot of fun because you never know what sort of people you're going to get. People love it, they want to come up be silly with us. 

 

We had one woman in Leeds who really enjoyed flashing. Not true flashing, but we got her into costume in her tutu and she was giving the audience what she thought they wanted to see. That kept us on our toes.

 

Yup, she was probably the funkiest. And we know we'll get better in Edinburgh. Last year we launched these two characters, there was one day when there was only in a woman with some children, and an elderly couple. So it comes to the crunch point when we have to pick someone, and we thought it was inappropriate to pick a child as there's some sexual innuendo in it. So we went for the old lady, and she was wild. She was one of the best performers we've ever had. We had to work hard so that she didn't upstage us. That taught us that we shouldn't second guess them.

 

Well, we're having last minute cuts so there are characters clinging on for dear life. We may have to sadly cut Paddington Bear, which is horrendous because I made the suit. He may give out badges on the street. We've cut a coffin sketch but it was a bit too technical. It's probably why people don't actually jump out of coffins, because it's too tricky. And also we had two characters doing this thing called the Feedback Sandwich, and that's become a Business Metaphor with a bullshit lasagne, but sadly we had to lose that. That was a beautiful premise of bullshit layered with bullshit and topped with cheese.

 

One of our favourites is a Spanish superhero who fights for the rights of short people, a very underrepresented group of people. We've also got a samurai with a little secret hidden under his kimono.

 

Actually it's quite tasteful. It involves an ornate wooden Japanese umbrella, which is probably our most tasteful prop to date. And we've got Venetian Top Gear with gondola racing, the Pope on waterskis and the Italian Stig. And we've got Snooker The Musical as well. 

 

It's difficult. I think we're in a great position that because with sketch, for our contemporaries there's quite a standard format to it. It gives us a springboard that we don't want to do that sort of thing. We've always been fans of Vic and Bob. We find the traditional format lets us start with a simple idea, like an awards ceremony, but then we'll make it for celebrity cats and go from there. But we don't try for the absurd because I think that would weaken it. You've got to hit a parody or a pastiche to make it work – we start with the normal and expand from there. We hope it does offer people something different but something they recognise, and something they can really laugh along with.

 

Definitely our presentation. We'll talk with the audience, there's no fourth wall with us. We're in character, and some will be grotesque or larger than life, but they're totally there for you. It's totally orientated around the audience. As a group we've got to be stronger and have a good group dynamic and I don't think you'll see many sketch groups like that.

 

We see it as a secret strength and have always kind of loved that, because it's quite a trend in sketch to use a lot of men, and wear suits and ties and braces. I think partly when we first came to the Fringe we were reactionary against that and dressed as ridiculously as we could. We've calmed that down but for us it's all about the characters, the madness and the pace. I hope no-one really notices we're women in that sense. What tends to happen in our show is that the guy plays the girl and the girls play the guys, but without that being a massive deal. If the character's strong enough it shouldn't matter who's playing it. 

 

Well, we have a set of characters called the Morris Men. It's myself and the other two girls in beards and they do extreme morris dancing with chains and dynamite. We happened to be doing a set at the Flower Market in London, and all of a sudden here comes Helen Mirren. We didn't give it a second thought but just started stalking her in our false beards. 

 

No, we got a little bit starstruck...there's no manual for talking to a celebrity while dressed as a man. We just kept our distance. Like jilted lovers. We've taken the Morris Men to a lot of places before. We got lost in some estates in Dublin which is not somewhere you want to go dressed in bells.

 

It is a riotous sketchfest. The Sunday Times called it superlative, we've done an ad with Citroen. We're coming up big and bold and we're going to produce a fantastic show, funny as hell.

 

Sadly, no. I'm working on it. They haven't found out about the Helen Mirren thing so we still could.