The Noise Next Door bring comedy improv to the Worthing stage
Tom Livingstone, from the group, is delighted to be back on the road: “This is our biggest tour for a while but I think actually technically we are still on the rearranged 2020 tour. I think one of the venues has actually been rearranged for the fourth time now. We had just started this tour when the pandemic hit. We had done the first four dates, I think, when everything started shutting down and we all know what happened next. So we have been waiting for this for a long time. Obviously the pandemic was really tough on everybody and we just did what we could to keep going. We ended up doing shows online, not in the first lockdown but in the second and third lockdowns and right up to the 18th lockdown or whatever it was. When we were able to get together to do the shows, we did them and we took suggestions from the public on Zoom and it worked well. It was quite a shift for us but we just focused on making sure that we enjoyed ourselves and laughed at each other made sure that we had fun. We also managed to develop some interesting things. We’ve developed some things that we would not have done if we had just carried on with the live performances and if there had not been a lockdown. I mean just little things. I think you can notice more about your own personal performance when you haven’t got an audience. It’s easier to think about how you are doing what you’re doing and why you are doing what you’re doing so in some ways perhaps there have been benefits to it. Of course, we would all rather that it hadn’t happened but the online stuff was a good opportunity in some ways. During the lockdown we started some games which we’re still doing.
“Just the other day it was our 14th birthday as a group and I just can’t really believe that. If we had been a person, we would have been in puberty by now! There’s still three of us originals left of the ones that started it.”
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Hide AdThe latest touring show In Charge is “all about putting the audience in charge in as many ways as we could make them. We’ve always had suggestions from the audience but now we’re putting them in control of all sorts of other things as well. The show is about getting volunteers to be involved but equally if you want to, you can just sit back and enjoy it. We never struggle for people to come forward but we never victimise our audiences and we never bully our audiences or make fun of them. It’s about getting people involved but only if they really want to. It’s fine if you don’t want to!”
As for the group’s longevity: “It has been about a lot of patience and understanding with each other and I think a big reason for why we have managed to keep going is that we are just nice to each other. We were pretty much the first people to do what we do and we are still one of only a few groups that do comedy improv on this scale, but what keeps us going is just being nice. It sounds so silly but it’s actually really important. We made a rule early on that we would just be good to each other. Sometimes there are fallings-out and disagreements but at the end of the day we just get on with each other and that helps keep it fresh. The fact that we are friends is also a big part of it. We go on stage every night and we create a new show and we are always happy to laugh. We know each other really well but we still don’t know what the other is going to say and we all still surprise each other. All of my favourite moments on stage are when one of the guys does something that just catches me and we will laugh and it’s just all about enjoying the fun and enjoying being with each other and enjoying being with the audience.”