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Hello, I love music, performing and collaborating and building nice relationships and have done so for the last 20 years.
Read more about my history below...
2000
It began here, sort of. I drop out of my Theatre BA course and work in a health food shop in Falmouth, Cornwall
2001
I start writing an essay and short story every day for two years
2002
I start work experience for Miracle Theatre as a dresser and Assistant Stage Manager. I attend a clowning course in Spain for a month and decide to join the circus
2003
I enrol at Circomedia, Bristol and trained to be a Clown, also specialising in Physical Theatre and Equilibristics and Manipulation (Juggling)
2004
For my final showcase at Bristol Old Vic Theatre, I sing and play guitar on stage whilst clowning. I discover this is something I enjoy very much: music, comedy and pathos all mixed together
2005
I am now a jobbing performer living in London and gain employment with dance companies, theatre companies and I begin to hone my comedy songwriting skills at some open mic nights
2006
I tour the Fringe Festivals of Canada (Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Victoria and Vancouver) with Harriet Plewis and Matthew Bellwood and our devised comedy theatre show lecture The Package It Came In.
2007-2011
For the next five years, I now focus on my solo musical comedy act which is called 'Tom Adams'. From beginning on open mic nights, honing comedy songs and trying to get a presentable ten minutes, to performing on BBC Radio 4's Loose Ends and supporting Simon Munnery on his national tour and bringing touring two solo comedy shows to Edinburgh Fringe in 2009 (Tom Adams: Dropped as a Child) and 2010 (Tom Adams Can't Come - Winner of Mervyn Stutter 'Spirit of the Fringe' Award) and with three solo comedy shows Battersea Arts Centre.
I enjoyed most of it. I have always and still do, love the immediacy of stand up comedy, the sense of oneness with an audience. The hard times were harder because I did not have anyone to share it with. During my time in the comedy world, I wondered where my endgame was. I didn't want to do panel shows and I got lonely, I love collaborating. I love being in a room with funny, talented, supportive people and sadly the pressure of being funny all the time on my own was too much to handle.
So, I just stopped doing gigs. Then, I met Laura Mugridge...
2012
Theatremaker and comedian, Laura Mugridge got in touch with me as she'd seen my Edinburgh show and wondered if I'd like to sit in a room with her for a week as she developed her new theatre show The Watery Journey of Nereus Pike. What followed is a wonderful long collaboration over lots of different theatre shows over the next few years including Still Score, Tony and Mike, Howl at the Moon, The Lesser Sun, My Dad, the Magician and Bookish.
We just made each other laugh and her supportive, caring nature means that any idea is tried out and played with. She helped me transfer from stand up comedy to Arts Council supported projects that could be financially viable as an artist. I felt like I could still make the shows I wanted to mae and that didn't necessarily fit onto the comedy circuit. They could go somewhere else.
2013
It was this year that my life really changed. I began to have daily migraines which took me to rock bottom. I stopped shaving and grew a massive beard. My friend, Laura, called it my breakdown beard. Over time though, after seeing a wonderful head specialist called Dr Manjit Matharu, my chronic pain was managed with drugs like Propranolol and Epilim. I am still on these drugs every day to this day and I wonder if I came off them, would the headaches come back? I might make a show about this process one day.
But it was this year of 2013, amongst the head pain, that I used this anger I felt to write my first Arts Council Project Grant for a solo show called Still Score. I was so overjoyed when I received the funding and it gave me a new impetus in how I could progress next, away from comedy clubs and into theatre, with the same artistic impulses.
2014-2017
This year I made Still Score, directed by Laura Mugridge and it toured nationally. I then applied to Arts Council again to make my second solo show Howl at the Moon. This application was successful also and I made it with Toby Park (Spymonkey). It was during this process that I understood my preference to making shows that are tourable in a suitcase.
Between 2014-2017 I devised, performed, produced several Arts Council support shows including The Apollo 11 Campervan and The Sleeptalking Project.
2017
In 2017, my wife and I moved from London to Margate and at first, I felt I'd made a massive mistake. My wife and I were making a show together, Elephant and Castle, supported by the Arts Council and we had use of Winter Gardens, Margate to rehearse, which was very kind of Pam Hardiman to help us out. My wife and I were arguing lots during making this, added with, or because of, the stress of moving and living in a strange, bleak town in the middle of January. We eventaully made a great show together, supported by David Parkin and Kirsty Housley with free space given to us by Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester, also. The show toured to
2018-2022
From 2018 onwards, I managed to make lovely friends, contacts and a deeper understanding of who I am within Margate and outside of Margate. When living in London, I didn't really need an identity as such, as London was so massive and like a brilliant friend, I could just orbit their gravity. In Margate and especially during Covid and lockdown, I began to understand my enjoyment more and more is with collaboration musically, infusing my work with a gentle comic, playful sensibility but not too much it will spoil the pudding. More and more, I just want to be me
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