“I Miss Amy has been selected for the 2022 VAULT Festival, Brixton House Theatre’s opening season Housemates and this year’s Boom Chicago Comedy Festival in Amsterdam. After all that, can it still premier when it goes to Edinburgh? I’m not sure I understand how that works…”
WHO: Suchandrika Chakrabarti: writer / performer
WHAT: “I Miss Amy Winehouse is the first solo hour from writer / comedian / journalist Suchandrika Chakrabarti (shortlisted for the inaugural VAULT FIVE scheme, regular writer on BBC Radio 4’s The News Quiz, Funny Women Stage Awards semi-finalist 2020, British Comedy Guide Pro Performance Awards finalist 2020). It’s 11 years since Amy Winehouse died. Suchandrika is a fan who partied the 2000s away in Camden, but never got to meet her musical hero. She’ll take you back in time to put that right. Brush up on your favourite Amy Winehouse trivia because there will be quizzes!”
WHERE: Paradise in The Vault – The Annexe (Venue 29)
WHEN: 12:15 (60 min)
MORE: Click Here!
Is this your first time to Edinburgh?
This is the first time I’ve brought a show to Edinburgh, yes. I’ve been before as a punter, and just loved the energy, the incredible variety of shows to see and the way the timings work well with my natural tendency towards being nocturnal. I’ve even got sunburned sleeping off a hangover in Princes Street Gardens. Now I can’t wait to be on the other side of the Fringe!
What are the big things you’ve learned since 2019 and have you absorbed any of the lessons yet?
Wow, what a question! On the whole, I don’t think I know yet. We’re still in the pandemic, and so much has happened in the world in those years – I’m not sure I’ve got to grips with everything at all. There is one thing, though: what is now my one-hour comedy show started life as the first two chapters of a novel during lockdown – one I’d been trying to write for a long time – but, even with good feedback from an agent, my instincts told me that no, this manuscript will never be finished. The narrator has got too much of a ‘voice’… could it be a show? I trusted that little inner voice, and it was right.
Tell us about your show.
I wrote I Miss Amy Winehouse, which is my debut stand-up hour, so naturally I’m performing it as well. In the show, I promise to take the audience time-travelling back to Camden in the mid-2000s, when I was working and partying hard in Camden, like Amy Winehouse. Maybe this time I’ll get to meet my musical hero? The show is about the absurdity of grief, the strangeness of celebrity, the joy of sticky nights out in Noughties Camden – and what it means to truly miss someone. With the aid of slides, Google Maps and, of course, a hologram of the late Robert Kardashian, I set out to find the solution for longing… in 60 minutes. I’ve not worked with a producer or director on this show, but I have been very lucky to get onto Soho Theatre’s Edinburgh Labs course this summer, which has introduced me to people who have been great sounding-boards for my show and all the stuff around it, in the way that a producer or director can be. I Miss Amy has been selected for the 2022 VAULT Festival, Brixton House Theatre’s opening season Housemates and this year’s Boom Chicago Comedy Festival in Amsterdam. After all that, can it still premier when it goes to Edinburgh? I’m not sure I understand how that works… and, yes, I am taking to at least one festival afterwards, but I can’t announce that yet.
What should your audience see at the festivals after they’ve seen your show?
Well, of course you must see all the shows by my Edinburgh Labs classmates! Check out Posey Mehta’s I Am Not A Gorilla, Sid Singh’s Illegally Funny, Chelsea Birkby’s No More Mr Nice Chelsea, Phil Green’s 90s Boy – Blair, the Lovegun and Me, Michael Kunze’s Lil Saffron: Ragu to Riches… honestly, check them all out, they’re brilliant shows and Soho Theatre seems to like them!
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