Dying Variety Scene?

[charliekarl]

Where I am living in Iceland all of the paid work has totally dried up since last October and that has led to a resurgence in artists stopping working for corporations and starting working for themselves. The only place we can get paid now is a theatre.
Since October I have produced 3 variety show seasons. All of which have sold out. Without doing this I would have been hungry and bored.
The fact that they sold out says that people want to see variety. People have always wanted to see it but we the artists havent been hungry enough to do all the work that it means to make a show.

Super interesting stuff Lee! The fact is that high quality variety shows that have had a lot of work put in to them, and employ pickyness in the choice of acts generally do sell anywhere as far as I've seen. Le Clique is a grand example of this. In Sweden Johan Welltons variety shows last winter pretty much sold out more than ten nights in big theatres. In Stockholm we have show calles Salong Giraff that sells out once a month. The above shows are all well produced, and also has a bunch of money invested in the production and in PR.

[Rex Boyd]

I'm hoping to see La Clique before the end of their current run which I think goes into June. They are in a superb venue in the centre of London and doing extremely well from what I can tell. They've been building up to this run gradually over the past few years on the Fringe circuit and have used a changing crew of performers many of whom are directly from the street scene. They are indeed showing that there is an audience for variety out there.

Here's their website:

http://www.lacliquelondon.com/default.asp

[Steven Ragatz]

I saw La Clique a few months back. Loved it so much I went twice! Very good show, super venue, great acts. Two big thumbs up and WELL worth the ticket price. Any of us should be proud to get a chance to perform with such a show.

Steven Ragatz