A what?  Yes, an improv symposium.  The Maydays are holding a geek-out event for all the impro(v) shows in Edinburgh this year.  We have some rather exciting names there such as Baby Wants Candy, Showstopper and Mike McShane off the tele.  We’ll wax lyrical about making stuff up, swap numbers and eat cake.  We’ve been running around Edinburgh leaving messages at the box offices of elusive shows and begging brilliant guests to come along and join the panel.  So if you’re an improviser and want to come along, do contact us.  The symposium is tomorrow: Tuesday 24th August at Underbelly Cowgate 11:30am.  We’ve been discussing the different reactions we’ve had to invites we’ve sent out – the companies that read the email and are dead excited about the idea and those that don’t and think they’re being invited to do 10 minutes of entertainment.   We particularly love American House Party who sound almost more enthusiastic than us!  Donuts, muffins, cupcakes, apple pies… f**k the script and love the improv.  Oh, and tonight’s Guest Who is Rob Rouse.  Rock on!

Hi - Katy here.  We've been waiting tensely for reviews since the very first preview and finally on show day 11 we have one!  And happily, it's a four-star goodun.  Edinburgh Spotlight think we're 'on a par with Paul Merton' which is great.  We have a previous accolade that says we can 'hold our own against the likes of Merton, Frost and Jupitus' too.  I'm hoping that by the end of the Fringe we will have so many Paul Merton comparisons that we can form a publicity campaign based entirely on how we are, basically, Paul Merton.  Now, I don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but my feeling is that a lot of people have only really heard of Paul Merton and no one else from the improv fraternity.  I have also been known to fall off my chair seeing those rare reviews when 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?' is not mentioned or if there is a mention of Chicago or Del Close.  Still, I shouldn't grumble.  I'm looking forward to the next big thing being reviewed as 'on a par with Schutte, MacMillan, Urquhart, Blackwater and Rowe'.  Good times. 

We had a great guest last night who I had the pleasure of joining at the shit-your-pants-scary Funny Women Final at the Comedy Store in 2007.  Nat Luurtsema is doing very well for herself.  She has even changed the emphasis of her surname so that comperes can cope with announcing her!  Here's a little treat from Nat and the Maydays all about overly close personal bonding...

By Jason Blackwater

That's right I'm catching up! This may be brief in one sense but informative in an entirely different one. the sort of informative that doesn't necessarily contain any, you know, information.

We're into the fringe proper which is why the ol' blogging has slowed down. it's tough realising, well remembering, that when you take a show to the fringe that starts at 23:35 every night, you won't actually be getting any proper free time. it's up at the break of noon for breakfast/meeting and then off to flyer until dinner, hitting all the similar shows until exhaustion forces you to eat, then it's off to flyer until the show passing a never-ending stream of bin-lining out to your ignoring public!

But, boy! has the show come to life! performing on a daily basis, with daily analysis of what's worked and what hasn't is really polishing our game. the five daily performers are getting to know each other's habits and skills and we're pushing each other in directions we never thought possible. And even in the temporary absence of our live-in technophile, Alexis, we we able to pull this wonderfully technological scene out of the bag on Rosie Wilby's appearance...

No show footage unfortunately for Keith Farnan who was a spectacularly generous guest and gave us loads of fantastic stuff to work with but he may well live longest in our memory for his idea for the "Simon Callow Is A D**k" campaign which was immortalised in a single late-night tweet to that effect which has certainly got people talking. From Laura Mugridge, a future guest of ours, to a lady playing Helen Mirren we always seem to be asked "what was that Simon Callow is a d**k tweet all about?"

Keith is proving to be a wonderful guy all round and always says hello as we pass which is exceptionally kind since he's off to dublin in a few days to film Michael McIntyre's Roadshow on the 19th. don't forget us Keith!

Bit of Brighton, now and on Tuesday we welcomed miss Julie Jepson from Brighton by the sea and she was simply charming. A group of us saw her show during the day and it was over in a flash. Seemingly without a trace of material or having honed her material so meticulously it felt improvised she charmed the crowd with enviable wit. As it stands Julie has our highest ticketed show with 30 punters paying on the door giving us a wonderfully warm atmosphere to play to.

The was warmly recieved even though we felt we had hit a bit of a lull and were capable of much, much more. However there were still some real gems in this show. Sparked from Julie's story about someone she knows owning 2 dogs because one had followed the other home from the park, we get this great song from Heather, Jason, Katy and Rebecca about the misery of a friend having a pair of husbands.

A real gem of a guest, now. James Acaster really knows how to tell a story. Weaving in all the detail and personality needed to make a really successful monologue. We came up with some great scenes from his monologues and the show had a real dynamicism because of it. James is relatively new to the comedy circuit but has, in my opinion, and incredible future and I for one would be glad to have him agaan as a guest if Guest Who? gets off the ground.

I think people are coming around to the idea of coming back to Edinburgh next year and build on our success this year. I think we've got a great show here and the more notoriety we get, the bigger guests we can attract and the more notoriety we'll get. I'm really excited by the idea. Apparently Spank! is seeing it's last battered mars bar for a while after this year and that's a slot we can easily fill in the Edinburgh cattle market.

Now we've all heard the old saying that if you swim after eating within 30 minutes you get cramp...well James has a friend who thought that if you eat, and water touches you, your head explodes which inspired this, my favourite scene of the fringe so far...

James Redmond was the guest for our main man and genius Musical Director, Joe Samuel's final show of his first ever Edinburgh Fringe. He announced to us yesterday that him and his lovely lady wife, Lydia are already planning to come up next year and for the whole month so we have to make sure we come back if only to take advantage of a full month of his talents.

And what a show to send him off with! James was a great guest who seemed to carry a theme through with him of his life at public school, scooping mashed potatoes into his pockets at supper and being a lonely posh kid during the holidays, it made for some wonderfully retro scenes involving wham bars and dinosaur pencil cases.

One particular highlight came in the following song, It's Not Easy Being Posh...

Laura Mugridge is doing exceptionally well for herself, she seems to be just about everywhere publicising her wonderful show, Running On Air, if it's not writing a weekly column for Three Weeks, it's getting 5 stars in The Metro or being interviewed by the Telegraph. We can be particularly excited by Laura's success as she is one of us. A Mayday. She may be focussing on other things at the moment but with all former Maydays she will always be a part of the cult of Mayday. We were fortunate to have Laura over to The Maydays Edinburgh HQ for way too many jacket potatoes, chilli, beans, cheese, feta, salad...basically a topping for every invited guest, a dinner we recorded for potential podcast material...eek!

Laura, as a Mayday, knows what we're about. Her monologues were packed with detail and emotion, a veritable conucopia of comic potential which was only half reached by us as the limits of time struck us down. we had some extraordinary scenes....Superfun!

By Jason Blackwater

The Fringe is officially under way. The first proper day of the run and already I'm behind. Hopefully I'll be doing 2 blogs today with two show clips to catch up but this is me we're talking about!

I never thought old age would creep up quite so fast. 3 late nights and all I want is to curl up in a big chair with a brandy, pipe and put some slippers on. Is 26 so different from 23? Maybe it is. Maybe I've peaked. Maybe it's all downhill from here. I know! I'll ask the others. That's the thing. I'm the baby of the group. at 26 I'm a full 4 years the junior of the next youngest Mayday and she's sneaking out before the night has even begun!

It's a good thing too when you're only going to turn up in the Beer Belly to discover 2 Australians, Andy (Underbelly staff) and Geoff  (who is dressed as a banana), a Kiwi, Anna (dressed as a banana) and a young German, Alex (seemingly dressed as a cowboy by accident) fresh from seeing the Ukelele Project alongside a pair of very drunk girls one of whom appeared unable to decide whether she was more keen to show off her knickers or nipples. Yes, the fringe has begun!

Isabel Hertaeg was a lovely guest and when you permanently carry a vibrating, rubber duck in your purse are you likely to be anything else? I'd like to add she's selling the bathtime entertainment as merchandise for her show, La Petit Mort, with 50% of the profits going to Breast Cancer Awareness which is a rather lovely and stimulating gesture.

In today's clip, Heather is being interviewed for a job which doesn't quite go to plan...

So it's the afternoon after the lunchtime after the morning after the night before and we're one show down. A good show with a lot of promising moments. The songs were great and here's a fabulous example of one where big sister, Rebecca, thinks everything she has should be bigger than what little sister, Katy has...

Our guest was Annie Fitzmaurice, coming to us from superb theatrical tradegy, The Fragility Of X, and she was superb. I'm sure she felt very nervous speaking to a room full of strangers about her "mad" father, her religious mother and her inability to think of a single sin worth talking about when it came to her bi-weekly confessions, but she provided us with just the right level of emotion and reality to make the show a success. It's so nice to have people come up to us in the street to say that they saw the show and really liked it which has happened a lot today, even though we were half full last night.

I think it's fair to say we're all ready for a month up here in the not-as-rainy-as-we-were-all-expecting-touch-wood Edinburgh City. There was tangible excitement in the moments leading up to the intro to Who Are You? by The Who which kicks off our show every night. and the energy at which we started was excellent. I hope we can maintain it with the nightly 3am discussions in what drinks were invented by monks and whether said drinks should be boycotted or quaffed aplenty to which the final moral was decided: don't drink monk juice. And neither will we!

We also received a splendid preview from Chris Hislop of FringeReview.co.uk which read as follows...

Improv, like stand-up comedy, is one of those art forms where the truly talented stand a full head and shoulders above the purely amateur: the Maydays are 100% the former. Where other improv troupes seem to rely on tired schticks, old characters rehashed and each others’ ability to outdo each other in terms of ‘wackiness’, the Maydays rely more on their ability to improvise effectively, creating interesting and rounded characters that it’s hard to believe were created on the spot. No one works harder than this troupe at refining their art and improving their ability, and this commitment and time spent together makes them the best improv to see at the Fringe, bar none.

As if that wasn’t enough, their show this year is also an exciting concept: improv with guest stars. In other troupe’s hands this kind of thing could spell disaster, but if anyone has the talent to pull it off, it’s these guys. With some exciting names already advertised, including Laura Mugridge, Tiernan Douieb and Terry Saunders, I can’t wait to see which other stars they pull out of the bag! Stay tuned for more info about guest stars on their website, and be sure not to miss this high-quality improv!

Heather and katy were practically moved to tears to hear such positive reaction to the work we do and I for one and very greatful to Mr Hislop for his words. They will more than likely bring many audients to watch us work and with a bit of luck they will all leave with a similar impression. A bottle of monk juice is on its way! 

Today’s moral of the story is this: don’t assume you have a technician. Not even a ghost of one.
This morning we’re sorting out a voiceover for the start of the show. We weren’t planning on doing it quite like this but it turns out we won’t have any sort of techie so we need to find a way to introduce ourselves and get on stage. But, hey, we’re improvisers so what’s a sudden change of plans to us?
Of course none of us are that ‘techie’ so we’re in discussion about making Jason’s pre-recorded voiceover sound even more fantastic.  In Heather’s words ‘we’re just in a bit of a pickle about putting the thingy on the thingy’.
Incidentally, Jason’s voiceover was recorded in our new studio (the toilet) with top of the range sound-proofing (a duvet on his head).
Joe (our MD) has a box. It’s a very impressive box with lots of knobs and buttons on it that makes sounds like this ‘Weeeeeeeooooooooeeeee-p!’, and ‘moooooo’ or simply the twittering of garden birds. For random improv-required sound effects it is a dream, and It is over this that Katy and Rebecca are pondering in order to get ‘the thingy on the thingy’.
Tonight is the first show of many and we have Corrie and Emmerdale actress Annie Fitzmaurice appearing as our guest. Later this afternoon I’m off to see her show ‘The Fragility of X’ but that’s not before our first improvised singing appearance on Princes Street at 3pm. Maybe we’ll see you there?
JR