Double night of shows for Steve Furst in St Leonards
The first, In Character, is a selection of some brand-new characters, featuring a Northern Soul DJ, a style-guru and former Royal butler.
The second show is The Way We Used To Live which uses old documentary footage to create a semi-stand up/spoof social commentary show.
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Hide AdBoth these shows are still works in development and Steve was keen preview them at the Kino, one of his favourite venues, he says.
“I used to live in St Leonards.
“I was there from about 2004 to 2009 and I left just really from a mix of family change reasons but it is one of those places that I keep coming back to.
“I’ve got a lot of incredibly good friends down there and I’ve been doing shows there on and off in one incarnation or another. I just keep coming back down there and performing.
“And the Kino is just a fantastic venue.
“I remember when it was just a builders’ merchants and I remember seeing the potential.
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Hide Ad“It is not designed for performance. The ceiling is not very high and it’s wide but that means that you don’t feel that people are too far away from you and it has just got a unique feel which is part cinema, part arts centre, part art gallery.
“The whole thing represents the good side of gentrification. It’s the heart and the soul of the guys that run it that also makes it so special. It’s a great place
“I did a character show there a few years ago that I was very, very pleased with.
“It was seven characters that I had and I wanted to do another show with new ones so that I could have a full two-hour show of just characters. I have been writing over the last year a few ideas and I just thought it was time to take the leap.”
There are five new characters.
“I like to make the characters as disparate as possible.
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Hide Ad“I used to do a show that was based on suburbia and I think you can straitjacket yourself if you go too much that way. It’s not like I’m talking about one particular issue.
“They’re all very individual characters, quite often dark. I’m not afraid to do the pathos route, the dark route. It feels a bit like Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads.
“The second show is another hour-long show which is utterly new territory for me using old documentary footage.
“I’ve been posting little bits of Pathe archive and Thames TV archive, just little nuggets of social commentary.
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Hide Ad“A lot of them I can use as they are and some of them I have revoiced.
“It’s a nice light-hearted look at the way we used to live.
“It’s about all of those things you will remember if you are over the age of about 40.
“You sit there and you think I remember that!
“It’s a nostalgic view and I’ve never done a show where I’m interacting with film which makes the Kino the number one place to go. I stand in front of the screen and it will be great.”