Founded in 2005, The Leeds Tealights are the University’s oldest running sketch group. Each year they work to produce shows in Leeds, before taking the best of their sketches to the Edinburgh Festival. Lily Dessau caught up with the new line up after one of their many rehearsals, to get to know them a little better ahead of their debut show, ‘The Leeds Tealights in 3D’, at The Library Pub next week

Transcribing my interview with The Leeds Tealights, I wondered if I should have made it a more rigorous interview. Everything we did discuss was great, but I struggled to hear what was being said behind the raucous laughter these guys draw out of each other. This may have put me at a disadvantage in writing up our evening together, but this dynamic is sure to make for a great show.

This year the Tealights have lost two members to the real world, kept two, and after a gruelling audition process found its three newest members of the oldest running sketch group in the University. I ask the newbies, Barnaby, Charlie and Hugh, the sorts of backgrounds they come from, and what led them to audition.

“I come from a different angle. We all perform in some way, but I don’t feel as though I want to go into comedy,” Barnaby begins to tell me, “I like writing, not so much for performance, so this is quite nice.’ For him, this is a dramatic change from sitting on his own writing short stories or poetry, “but quite an extreme side, it’s all laughter, laughter, go, go, go, high energy performance.”

Hugh comes from the more conventional acting background. “I want to be an actor, and that’s where my main interest lies, last year I was in The Birthday Party, and quite sombre shows, so I really wanted to do some comedy,” he says.

Charlie utters “I’ve never done comedy before, and I probably won’t ever again.” She does not describe herself as a comedian, and says that she found this hard, “I’ve never done anything like it before.” One of the most rewarding parts of being in Tealights, for Charlie, is being in a group and devising.

Joe and Henry, who continue their roles in the Tealights from last year, both also perform. Joe says that although he did do a lot of plays in first year, he knew it was something he really wanted to get involved in. In Henry’s absence, Joe tells me that he wants to go into comedy when he graduates, and as well as the Tealights, spends time doing stand-up.

With such a small cast, of just the five performers and Astrid Ferguson as producer, and spending “an unhealthy amount of time together” as Joe describes it, these guys have got a great relationship that is bound to translate to the stage.
The hard work and dedication is obvious, not only from their tri-weekly rehearsals, but through their sense of achievement in making the ensemble cast. Barnaby says “just by auditioning you realise if you have potential to do it.” It seems as though these guys have learned a lot through becoming Tealights. He continues, “the audition process is healthily competitive, and by the end you see that you have earned your place in the group. You realise how you have to bring all of yourself to the table, because you’re one fifth (or sixth including Astrid), so there’s a lot of commitment.”

Asking about how the sketches and shows come together, I am surprised to learn that all of the sketches in this show have been devised by the five of them, with little help from the writing team that they do also have. Joe explains that “we do have some people who are interested in writing, but it is quite hard. It works well if you know the people you’re writing with, but if you’re a writer coming from the outside it can be quite hard. It is nice having writers who know you, because they know the sort of comedy you want to do.”

The Tealights do have Mike Hewitson, an aspiring comedian who does come into rehearsals when they feel a second opinion is needed. But, as Charlie says, “we’ve all done quite a bit of performance so we are quite switched on to what audiences like. We are acutely aware to how the audience will react.” Let’s hope that’s true come Monday (when the show opens).

We talk about the difficulty in trying to separate what you might find funny from what will actually work on stage. “Yeah that’s the importance of the auditions” Joe begins. It was up to him, along with Henry and Astrid, to undertake the gruesome task of auditioning the wannabe-Tealights. Although a challenge, it seems as though Joe took the audition process very seriously, looking at who would work together best on the stage. “If you have five people with the same style, it can be quite alienating for the audience. You’d rehearse thinking ‘Oh, this is great’ and then actually get out on stage to a quite different response”.

Barnaby makes clear the contrasting experiences these guys can draw upon, “dance, classical acting, and then Drag Bingo which is my experience.” Barnaby both wrote and starred in the sell-out ‘Bimbo Bingo’, a live comedy drag show punctuated with real bingo. We can only hope this influence was heavy during the brainstorming sessions.

“We’re quite good if someone comes in and says ‘I think this is going to be great’, that if it’s not funny, to move away from it quite quickly. In this room ‘maybe’ means no.” Hugh says, sending the other members and myself into fits of laughter. Barnaby agrees, “We move on quite quickly and a bad idea can get lost. We say ‘great, we’ll revisit that’ and then conveniently run out of time.” Joe continues, “Yeah, sometimes it’s good to try out but sometimes you can tell, just-”, Hugh interrupts “You know what would be better – nothing!”

From what I can gather, each of the Tealights is funny in their own way. I wonder if their friends expect them to be funny now they are in the sketch group? “Yeah slightly, and it can be a bit annoying” begins Joe, before Barnaby says “I am just not the funny one at all. Always dark, but not always funny.” Hugh’s humour becomes clearer when he responds “A lot of the comedy weight is taken off my shoulders as my friends expect me to be the arrogant one, so I can concentrate on doing that.” Charlie describes her friends’ surprised response to the news she made it into the Tealights, “‘what, the Tealights? Right, ok… Well done’ I don’t think they believed it.”

After keeping the Tealights for too long, I ask if there’s anything else they want to talk about. Joe enthusiastically says “Life”, whilst Charlie seems more concerned with her dinner. After being in rehearsals for a good few hours before I arrived, they were bound to be exhausted, but you wouldn’t have been able to tell. This bodes well for next week. Good luck to them, the funniest kids on campus.

The Leeds Tealights in 3D is at The Library Pub Nov 19-21, 8pm. Tickets £5(4 Comedy Soc members) leedstickets.com