Big Mouth Masterclasses in Performance Poetry 2006-2007
Matt Harvey
www.mattharvey.co.uk
With no protective fourth wall the stand-up lives or dies, thrives or withers, according to the unpredictable response of this evening’s audience - this capricious, unrepresentative cross-section of society which tends to be crueller than the sum of its parts and younger than the mean age of its constituents.
They want instant gratification. And they want it now.
The Feb 12th master class will explore the overlap between stand-up and performance poetry. It will start with a (very) short performance leading into a (brief) discussion of the differences and similarities between the two forms. Then it gets interesting and as we do various exercises which explore the whole thing a bit more experientially…
You won’t be asked to tell jokes or try and be funny, but please bring along a couple of poems which might lend themselves to or already have an extended intro or outro…
Matt Harvey has been writing and performing for ages and making a living this way since about 2001. He performs all over the country in cabarets, colleges, conferences and arts festivals and sells four small self-published books. He has become a regular voice on Radio 4 with series such as One Night Stanza, Back to the Drawing Board and, in 2005, The Next Darjeeling.