The Tringe Festival is the Hertfordshire town of Tring's annual comedy festival. Now in its fourth year, The Tringe features top acts, many from 'off the telly', previewing their shows before they take them up to the Edinburgh Fringe in August.
A couple of months ago, I was approached by Ben Moorhouse, the director of The Tringe, to come up with a concept to help promote the festival and being a fledgling comedian myself (I will be compering at one of the nights) I settled on the 'hilarious' idea of stand up stand-ups.
I set about illustrating 14 of the acts appearing, including Stewart Lee, Ed Byrne and Russell Kane and then created cut-out and crease-up versions of them. These stand ups were then photographed for promotional posters, banners and the event guides.
A5 versions of the stand ups that include the twitter handles of the featured comedians have been produced to encourage people to photograph the acts in funny settings and share online.
Also large 'almost life-size if the comedians were freakishly disproportioned' stand ups were made and have been taking up residency in local shops, sporting events and museums (Tring is famous for it's Natural History museum featuring stuffed animals - Ed Byrne was lucky enough to take a tour).
Some of the real life comedians have stopped by for a photo opportunity with their illustrated doubles including Richard Herring, Tony Law and Ed Byrne.
There has been lots of local involvement including Tring Brewery creating 'Rib Tickler' a custom comedy ale (guffaw percent alcohol!).
The results so far for the Festival have been great - the biggest pre-festival ticket sales to date with several of the 21 shows already sold out as I write this.
It all kicks off on Sunday 30th June and lasts for three whole weeks, the standard of the acts is of an unbelievable calibre for a town the size of Tring so do get along if you can. Full details are at the Tringe website www.tringefestival.co.uk.
All in all, a really fun project that combines both work and pleasure (that's me below making them laugh at last year's Tringe).