Award winning Victoria Melody has created a special post-Covid Live Zoom performance of ‘Professional Stranger’ especially for Normal? Festival of the Brain. Originally planned to be in the Quarterhouse, with a live audience, this one-off performance will take us all on an unexpected journey into Victoria’s brain.
Victoria, described as “the female theatrical Louis Theroux” (Oxford Mail), embarks on the difficult business of being funny, embedding herself into the world of British amateur stand-up comedy. Despite a surprise diagnosis and a comedy teacher telling her to give up, can she be funny enough to make it?
Always the obsessive Victoria will be wearing technology that shows in real-time what happens to the brain when you tell jokes. It’s a genuine rip-roaring insight into the brain and the secret world of stand-up.
In the past Victoria has become a pigeon fancier, northern soul dancer, beauty queen, championship dog show handler and a funeral director all for material for her theatre shows.
Following the performance, there will be a Q&A with Victoria and neuroscientist Sylvana De Pirro.
The research and development for this project has been supported by the Watershed’s Winter Residency, Farnham Maltings, South Street, SARIC – University of Sussex and Arts Council England.
Streaming LIVE from a deserted secret comedy club in Brighton.
Presented as part of Normal? Festival of the Brain co-curated by Creative Folkestone, Living Words and Folkestone Fringe.