Comedy / sketch comedy
Interview: Sleeping Trees
From October 1-5 the Wardrobe Theatre brings you Silly Funny Boys, the brilliant new show from sketch comedy trio Sleeping Trees. The Trees, should you not know them, are the hilarious multi-roling, genre-splicing, physical comedy trio behind the movie trilogy Mafia?, Western? and Sci-Fi? plus World Tour and their Christmas sketch show, Nativity.
Sleeping Trees have been touring their fast-paced stories, chaotic characters and frantic physicality, like only they can, for a decade. After ten years in the game, the trio have aged like a fine wine, except they’re cheap and if you drink them you will be sick.
“Puns, heartbreak and visual humour the likes of which you’ll struggle to find elsewhere.”
★★★★★ The Skinny
“Monty Python has been reborn as the Sleeping Trees.”
★★★★★ Glam Adelaide
Here are the three Trees, Joshua, John and James, to tell us more.
is needed now More than ever
Tell us about the Sleeping Trees creative process – how do shows come together? Who does what? How much is writing, how much is playing things out?
The process often changes from show to show, for this one we were barely together so it was a lot of writing separately then trying bits out at previews and going from there. We spent a large chunk of Edinburgh working on it too, we didn’t really have it ready until halfway through the run, but we got there! The best bits normally come from mistakes that happen live, of which there are aplenty.
How do you know, in the creative process, when you’ve landed on something and when you haven’t?
The general rule for something making it into the show is if it makes us all laugh, it’s fairly tough to fight for something if one or more of us isn’t feeling it. Most of the time the audience have to like it too, but occasionally we’ll keep a gag in just for us.
How does this show resemble / differ from your previous outings?
This show differs a fair bit from everything we’ve done before, it sort of combines the emphasis on narrative that was present in our earlier shows with the more sketchy nature of our previous Edinburgh show, World Tour. So you get each little set piece, but there’s a loose narrative that ties it all together.
“Puns, heartbreak and visual humour the likes of which you’ll struggle to find elsewhere.”, said one review. Is there heartbreak among the humour, then?
Our humour has always had a bit of a dark edge to it, so there is normally at least one heartbreaking moment to balance out the sheer stupidity. Often the saddest stuff can be the funniest, or maybe we’ve just become old and jaded. COME AND SEE OUR SAD SHOW.
Sleeping Trees: Silly Funny Boys Wardrobe Theatre, Oct 1-5. For more info, visit thewardrobetheatre.com/livetheatre/sleeping-trees
Read more: Inside the Bristol Improv Theatre
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