Mace and Burton: Rom Com Con

You’re doing two shows as part of the Free Fringe this year, including an updated version of last year’s ‘Rom Com Con’. For those who missed it last time round, what’s it all about?

Juliette: Rom Com Con is the true story of what happened when Lizzy and I were both fed up with being single and watching all our friends getting married.

Lizzy: I’d been single for five years and besides being invited to at least four weddings every single year, by early 2011 I was even living with two couples.

Juliette: And I’d recently split up with my boyfriend of six years whilst four of my best friends got engaged, three of them asking me to be a bridesmaid!

Lizzy: -and then Prince William got married!

Juliette: Yes! We felt like the last two single girls in the world! So…we decided to try looking for The One by road-testing all the ways guys and girls meet in romantic comedies to see if they work in real life.

Tell us a bit about your second show, ‘Heartbreak Hotel’.

Juliette: Heartbreak Hotel is a totally different kind of show. It’s a cathartic comedy chat show all about heartbreak, heartache and heartwarming moments.

Lizzy: The idea is that we run a hotel where people can come and stay to get over heartbreak.  We’ll have guests from across the Fringe coming in to talk about their own experiences of heartbreak and how to get through it. We’ll be finding the funny in this very universal experience – we think by talking about it and laughing at it, we can reduce some of its negative power and even find some positivity in it.

Juliette: All our guests will be signing and writing advice in our Heartbreak Hotel Guestbook which we will auction off for charity. Throughout the Fringe, audiences can bid in an online auction which they can follow on our Twitter account @MaceAndBurton. In our final performance, we will have a live auction, with live and online bids culminating in a sale at the end of the show.

Lizzy: Money raised will go to the mental health charity MIND. We hope to help raise awareness of mental health problems and the places people can go to get the help they need. We’re looking to get some celebrity names involved to encourage even more people to get talking.

Can you tell us who some of your special guests will be?

Juliette: We’re inviting some of our favourite acts from last year’s Fringe including the award-winning mindreading comedian Doug Segal, the lovely German comedian Paco Erhard-

Lizzy: -I love him. He’s lovely.

Juliette: He is lovely. And award-winning sketch troupe Casual Violence.

Lizzy: We’re also hoping to welcome impressionist Anil Desai, Facebook expert comedian Jools Constant, and character comedian Anna Morris, creator of the viral hit “Georgina, Britain’s most annoying bride-to-be”.

Juliette: We’ve also had interest from Edinburgh talent JoJo Sutherland and the lovely American psychotherapist comedian Taylor Glenn.

How do you plan on keeping the shows fresh?

Lizzy: Heartbreak Hotel will be very different every day because our guests will each bring something different, from their personal experiences and styles of comedy, to their own unique ideas about how to best get over heartbreak. No two shows will be the same.

Juliette: We’ve also worked hard to reinvent Rom Com Con since our 2011 run. Because it’s a true story, with every new audience we re-live it because we see them reacting with us to the highs and lows we went through ourselves when researching the show. And Lizzy and I bounce off each other-

Lizzy: -not literally!-

Juliette: Well…sometimes literally! If I’m lucky!

What is it that makes being involved in the Free Fringe so appealing?

Juliette: It offers people free entry, and then the option to donate what they think it’s worth – and what they can afford – at the end. If we’ve given them a great quality show then hopefully they'll be generous as they can  when donating. Why pay £12 to see a show you might be disappointed in when you can come see our shows for FREE and then decide at the end if you want to pay £2, £10 or more?

Lizzy: With the Free Fringe we don’t pay to hire the venues so it makes the Fringe accessible to so many more performers to practise, learn and develop early in their careers without a huge financial risk. And I’m a bit of a hippy at heart, so I love that it’s organised on a co-operative basis by the performers themselves. When I did my first Edinburgh Fringe show two years ago it was an instant support group.

What are some of the most interesting responses you’ve had from audiences in the past?

Juliette: Last Fringe people said Rom Com Con left them feeling uplifted and that it was a great way to start the day. We had a huge range in terms of age – from pre-teens to those in their 70s – and relationship status; one woman told us “I never thought I’d be so happy to be married!” and one lady in her 40s told us: “I’ve just got divorced and this is the first time I felt hopeful since the separation.”

Lizzy: And it wasn’t just women who loved the show: a stag party of 12 came to see us and loved it.

Juliette: One middle-aged man I flyered was very sceptical but after the show he hugged me and thanked me for persuading him to see it!

Lizzy: Juliette deserves an award for her flyering skills. We even met one man who had a lanyard around his neck saying “Don’t flyer me. I’m not here for the Fringe.” After Juliette chatted to him, he asked for a flyer, came to the show and has now become one of our biggest fans!

Juliette: It’s only because I tell everyone how amazing your boobs are that I get so many people in.

Lizzy: It’s true! I mean, it’s not true that my boobs are amazing-

Juliette: -although they are-

Lizzy: But it’s true that she gets loads of people to come to the show.

Who else are you hoping to catch at the Fringe?

Juliette: We’re going to see as many of our guests’ shows as we can possibly fit in. We’ll definitely be seeing Doug Segal at the Gilded Balloon, Paco Erhard’s show-

Lizzy: -I love him-

Juliette: -and Casual Violence. We’d love to see the delightful Fred Macaulay (who personally emailed us the other day wishing us well!). We’ll make time to see the hilarious Sam Simmons who we saw and cracked up at last year. At his show, not just at him in the street…

Lizzy: Felicity Ward: The Hedgehog Dilemma is brilliant, as is Craig Shaynak: I Am Google.

Juliette: I love the ideas in The Hedgehog Dilemma! Finally, we already have our tickets to see the fabulous Daniel Kitson’s show at the Traverse. We wanted to see Where Once Was Wonder but he’d sold out almost as soon as the tickets became available!