comedy feature
Ben Moor: Not Everything Is Significant
James Murray finds out why Ben Moor likes to do theatre at the Fringe.
Stand-up theatre probably isn’t the right expression; it’s storytelling. One reviewer said it was like Jackanory for grown-ups.” Ben Moor’s one-man shows are a little hard to define; ‘monologue’, ‘solo’, ‘monodrama’, none of these categories quite do it justice. In essence, Ben tells stories. These stories contain jokes, but that is far from being all there is to it. “You can do much more interesting things and take an audience to more interesting places if you have a narrative, than if you just try to make them laugh. I find it more interesting to tell stories that have both the scope for humour and also the potential to take you to a more thoughtful place.”
Ben exhibits a certain disillusionment with the world of stand-up comedy; “I didn’t love the stand-up world,” he admits. “I felt that the audiences liked the quick gratification of a funny joke or routine or song that can instantly be grasped and consumed. You have your ten minutes, then you have to get the next guy on, and you have to have a beer break every 30 minutes for the bar to make its money. No disrespect to stand-ups; I’ll be seeing lots of those shows as well, but at the Edinburgh Festival, why not try something different?”
‘Not Everything Is Significant’ is ostensibly about a writer who receives a diary for the coming year which has already been filled in; by himself. On the surface it sounds like a comment on fate and determinism along similar lines to the film ‘Stranger Than Fiction’. “Actually,” says Ben, “It’s not really like that. It’s about tiny details in our lives: things we’ve seen and things we’ve done that we feel define ourselves and that we want to share with people while we’re here, so that we can become part of their lives. There’s a line in the show about horizontal life extension. It’s not about extending our lives in terms of living longer, but by being part of other people’s lives.”
I need a moment to take this in. “I hope it doesn’t sound like this heavy, clever thing because it’s not really; it’s more like a flowerbed full of things you can either pick or just sniff and move on if you like, but once you get a bit of perspective on it you can see the reasons for everything growing.” Not everyone is going to pick up on all the levels of meaning that are in the show – some people will simply enjoy the inclusion of a huge American Indian headdress and Ben’s hilarious description of the act of “poodling” – but it is important to Ben that there is more to the show than just laughs. “I do feel that I have a responsibility to an audience to actually put in that sort of effort to make something that can be appreciated at different levels, because the authors and film makers that I love do have those little gems in there, which you don’t necessarily have to appreciate, but if you can you do.”
Ben’s shows are full of complex ideas and beautifully written prose. He has had shows broadcast on radio and he could also quite easily leave his work on the page, but it is the directness and intimacy of live shows that he seems to thrive on and find most rewarding. This will hopefully keep him coming back to the Edinburgh Festival. He certainly seems unlikely to go mainstream. “I know my place”, he says, “and it’s in the fringe theatre world.”
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Ben Moor's 'Not Everything Is Significant' was on at the Pleasance Courtyard.
published: Oct-2008
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