Comedy / Interviews
Mark my words
One of his generation’s brightest and most consistently intriguing performers, Mark Watson returns this month to the city where he grew up, bringing his new show Flaws to the Tobacco Factory Theatre from November 16 to 18.
Mark’s career highlights to date have included Hotel Alpha, his novel and website that documents the comings and goings at a single hotel across 30 years, as well as a couple of marathon, 24-hour comedy shows.
A lifelong Bristol City fan who’s sometimes to be found at Ashton Gate, Mark performed for several years with a Welsh accent, but has now reverted to his normal speaking voice, honed at Henleaze Junior school and then Bristol Grammar School.
Tell us about growing up in Bristol.
Bristol still feels more like ‘home’ than London. When I went to uni I was vaguely glad to escape, as everyone is with their home town. But the longer I’ve been away, the more attractive Bristol seems (and it’s also improved since I was a kid). I still spend quite a bit of time here and I’m enjoying being at the Gate, as it develops into an even mightier hub of south-west sport. I don’t want to jinx it, but just at the moment it’s not a bad place to be…
Hotel Alpha was an ambitious project. Has it turned out as you wanted?
It was a gruelling book to write – I don’t think I’ll be trying my luck with long time-frames again for a while! But I’m proud of the way it’s turned out, especially the extra digital stuff. The website is for dipping into at your leisure. Readers can consume as much or as little as they want, making for a different kind of reading experience. You can follow individual strands from the novel, or just splash about at random in the massiveness of it.
24-hour shows, a multi-stranded novel and website… you seem more interested in depth, complexity and multi-facetedness than the average stand-up.
I am drawn to big, potentially over-ambitious projects. I think it’s important to set your sights high: in the attempt to get there, you will achieve something worthwhile. You should never stay within comforting limits, as a writer or a comedian: you should try to surprise yourself.
What are you talking about in ‘Flaws’?
About some of my own flaws (swearing, drinking, negativity, killing – no, not really killing) and about human fallibility in general. Everyone knows that our flaws make for better entertainment than our good points – pretty much all comedy is based, to some extent, on things going awry. But I’m interested in what it does to your psyche if your job involves parading your inadequacies over a long period of time, as mine does.
The accent thing is interesting. What does it tell us about the ‘real’, and the ‘stage’ Mark Watson?
Most comics are projecting a slightly distorted version of themselves on stage: the accent is quite a stark example of that principle. It began as a way of disguising my identity – from myself as much as anything. You are making yourself very vulnerable by getting up in front of an audience, and having some sort of persona removes some of that fear.
As time went by, I felt I didn’t need the accent, and that it was even holding me back. It took a conscious and quite scary effort to leave it behind, but I definitely feel more at home on stage now than I ever have.
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