Synergy Concerts
and One Inch Badge present
NEIL HILBORN
The most watched poet of all
time makes his UK debut
11:15pm 9th -15th
August @New Town Theatre
12PM 21st – 27th
August @Stand 3
With a debut sold out UK
tour under his belt NEIL HILBORN makes his Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut August
2017. Neil Hilborn is the most watched poet of all-time with over 100m
views online. He is the viral poet behind the internationally successful poems
“O.C.D.”, “Joey” and “The Future”
and is also the author of the Amazon Bestseller “Our Numbered Days”.
What was the
inspiration for this performance?
This
performance was inspired by my issues with my mental health. Many of my poems
deal with mental illness, and with this show I wanted to find a way to put them
together with storytelling and jokes. I’m trying to show my journey toward
self-acceptance, but hopefully in a subtle, unpretentious manner.
Is performance
still a good space for the public discussion of ideas?
I think it’s
one of the best spaces we have. It’s easy to dismiss someone’s story when you
have the distance of a TV or computer screen, but with live performance there
is an actual, physical being in front of you. It’s difficult to ignore an idea
when a performer embodies it in the real world. You can’t change the channel on
someone standing on stage.
How did you
become interested in making performance?
Being a
performer kind of snuck up on me. I had been a writer since I was a small
child, but I had never even considered reading any of my poems out loud until a
friend introduced me to spoken word poetry and took me to a couple poetry
slams. It just seemed like a cool way to think about poetry, so I wrote a
couple performance-oriented poems and entered some competitions. I lost them
all horribly, but I enjoyed the instant feedback I got from audiences and their
energy, so I kept writing and kept coming back, and now it’s nine years later
and somehow I’m a professional writer and performer. I'm still astounded that
this is a job and that I get to have it.
Is there any
particular approach to the making of the show?
I’ve been
developing this show over the past couple years of touring, and the process has
been pretty organic. I had certain poems and stories that I did every show in
pretty much the same place, but I changed some poems out, moved them around,
allowed myself to improvise and go on tangents, and I always paid attention to
audience reaction with any new bit I was doing. I think of my set as though it
were a combination of music and comedy: some poems I’m going to do every single
show, but everything around them changes so that the show doesn’t feel stale
and so that I seem invested in and surprised by every performance.
Does the show
fit with your usual productions?
This show is my
only production, so I would say yes, definitely, yes.
What do you
hope that the audience will experience?
I try to hit a
full range of emotions in my show, so I hope that I can make the audience ugly
cry, then laugh until it’s uncomfortable, then cry a little more, and
ultimately I hope they leave feeling inspired.
What strategies
did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?
I don’t think I
have a conscious strategy when it comes to audience experience. I design the
set around a certain emotional arc so that the audience goes through joy and
sadness intermittently, but beyond that I just pay attention to the audience’s
reactions and energy when I’m in the room, and I try to give them more of what
it feels like they want
Neil began writing and
performing slam poetry whilst a sophomore at Macalaster College in St. Paul,
Minnesota. He joined the college’s slam poetry team and in 2011 placed first in
the College National Poetry Slam.
After graduating with honors
in his Creative Writing degree Hilborn began performing with Button Poetry, a
Minnesota collective that produces and distributes poetry in various formats,
such as published books and YouTube videos.
In 2012 Neil toured the
mid-west with Button Poetry’s “The Good News Poetry Tour” and self-published his first chapbook “Clatter”, which was re-published the following year by Button Poetry.
Having been diagnosed with
obsessive-compulsive disorder as a child, and later with bi-polar disorder
while at university, Hilborn has often used his poetry as a means of therapy
and of exploring the issues of his own mental health. In 2013, a video one
such poem "O.C.D.” went viral,
garnering millions of views across social media platforms. As of 2017 the video
has garnered more than 62 million views and is the most watched slam poem on
the internet.
Hilborn's second book, “Our Numbered Days”, was released on May
14, 2015.
“Our Numbered
Days” features some of Hilborn's most well known poetry, including
"Joey" and "OCD" and has become an Amazon best-seller.
A Synergy
Concerts & One Inch Badge presentation
@SynergyConcerts /
@OneInchBadge / @Neilicorn / @New_TownTheatre / @TheStandComedyClub
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