My efforts to keep up regular blog posts (more to compensate for my terrible memory than anything else) have been pretty poor over the last few months.

My original excuse was being busy with shows - between now and my last blog post I've worked on the home run of an international tour of Twelfth Night, a run of Cruel and Tender, Cambridge's 24 Hour Plays, the first full-length play I've ever written, and my adaptation of the bluntly-titled Zombie Haiku (which, having been selected for ISDF, even now requires a fair bit of work). However, due to a self-imposed ban brought on by my increasing awareness that I ought to at least look like I'm trying to get a good degree, I can no longer pretend that I'm too busy doing theatre to write about it.

I'm developing an increasing fondness for solo shows and was reminded of this at Sampled Festival yesterday (a 'micro-festival' at The Junction in Cambridge) - though oddly enough by a two-person show. I originally went along to see The Oh Fuck Moment, which I hadn't watched since the preview in Norwich last year, and ended up hanging around to see Action Hero's Frontman, a brilliant piece about a performer crumbling under the pressure of an increasingly disasterous comeback show. Both the performer and their (justifiably) antagonistic sound operator made up the cast, though it did often have the feel of a solo show, just with an exposed stagehand. It was a fantastic show, with probably the most cinematic ending of any piece of theatre I've ever seen (the performer repeating a personal mantra as her voice faded and the lights brightened to almost entirely obscure her).

It was also a good reminder of the rewards of venturing beyond uni to see shows - it's incredibly easy for me to see around four student shows a week, for free, and whilst a good habit financially I'm not sure it's all that great otherwise. Granted, some of the student shows I see are brilliant (Cambridge is supposed to be alright at that kind of stuff after all) but I'd never see something like Frontman at any of the university venues. I do wish I'd seen more of sampled festival, as it's precisely the kind of shows I adore but are never attempted within my uni.

Obviously, this moaning might seem rather self-indulgent - if I like these kinds of shows so much, all I needed to do was direct one myself and voila, the student venues would be offering precisely this brand of theatre. I have tried, when possible, to produce unusual shows (with the venue for my most recent one turned into a huge sitting room, both the actors and audience sitting on sofas and armchairs). However, sometimes it takes something like Sampled to remind me of the sheer scope of things that can be done, and done so incredibly well. For all the many, many student shows I'll undoubtedly see before I graduate, I doubt any will inspire me as much as Frontman. Thank god for the unexpected.