COMEDY NIGHT AT THE WOODFIELD

As part of the 2025 Wandsworth Arts Festival, join us at The Woodfield Pavilion for two great shows for the price of one!

First, New York City Comedian, Bryan Stoops, presents Celebrity Girlfriend Draft, a clean hour of stand-up that has been seen at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Leicester Comedy Festival and The Melbourne International Comedy Festival. The show is a love letter to Bryan's wife and kids wrapped up in a beautiful bow of observational comedy and obscure movie references.

Second, someone has dropped an atom bomb on Copenhagen. With all-out war looming, an underqualified junior staffer in the British government must somehow stimulate a response from his idiotic superiors. There is just one thing standing in his way: Microsoft Teams. It's Operation Blank, written and performed by George Grant.

As part of Wandsworth Arts Fringe - the Woodfield Pavilion is delighted to host a double-bill comedy evening.

Two laughs are cheaper than one! - get cashback if you book both!!

BRYAN STOOPS - https://bryan-k-stoops.mykajabi.com/bryan-stoops-comedy-homepage

GEORGE GRANT - https://ggwellplayed.co.uk/

BRYAN STOOPS

"I grew up in the eastern Los Angeles County suburbs. I was actually a magician from the ages of seven to twenty-four. I was fairly successful. I earned a Bachelors in theatre. There were some twists and turns and I became an educator (yes, I know in the UK, the phrase "American Educator" is an oxymoron).

I got married and had some kids. When I turned forty, I handled it really well; I didn't overreact at all. I just took my wife and kids and moved them from southern California, where we had spent our entire lives, and moved them to the New York City area. I started going stand-up a few years after moving to NYC.

After six years of living in the East and twenty years of being an educator, I needed a change. In August of 2024, I moved to Portsmouth, Hampshire where I have been teaching secondary literature there since the Autumn. Yes, that's a REAL decision I REALLY made as a man in his forties.

I will be talking about teaching in the UK, but I will also perform Celebrity Girlfriend Draft, an hour of stand-up that's been seen at The Edinburgh Fringe, The Leicester Comedy Festival, The Melbourne International Comedy Festival, and in such exotic cities as Casablanca, Hollywood and Chichester. It's an hour of comedy that doesn't punch down, and that'll leave you feeling good."

GEORGE GRANT

"When I sat down to write the first draft of Operation Blank, I was at something of a crossroads. Having spent most of my childhood as a stage performer, I had turned my back on the arts in pursuit of life’s true pleasure, Microsoft excel. Five years of study at Edinburgh university, a 1st class in civil engineering and two years at a top London bridge design house later and I came to a surprising revelation: spreadsheets are shit. It had taken me a mere seven years to figure out but, like a penguin discovering the Antarctic was a poor choice of real estate, it had finally dawned on me that everything my life had been building towards was cold and boring.

So what to do about it? It’s a question that would need a fairly good answer if I was to abandon my hard earned tedious 9-to-5. An answer much better than “just become a writer”. I had wanted to write for as long as I could remember, but I hated the idea of becoming a writer. You know the sort; they wear sandals in public and carry Moleskine notepads in their back pockets just in case the creative juices start flowing on the northern line. They make no money, and society resents them for not contributing more to the upkeep of the nation. I had spent seven years running from that, and I wasn’t going to stop now. I’d just need to think of something else.

But there wasn’t something else, there was just more spreadsheets. So, to that crossroads: leave your job and be hated by society, or stay and hate yourself. Anyone will tell you that not making a decision is a pretty big one, and in my case, it meant a daily dose of all the things that made me feel hollow. One night, whilst a bit drunk on a late train, I decided to channel this feeling into a script. I gave a character an incomprehensible problem and demanded that he figure out a solution ASAP. I then made sure he had to do it all on Microsoft teams because fuck him. By the time I was home, Operation Blank was born and I had made my decision. I’m sure there’s something poetic to be read into the script about my indecisiveness being the catalyst for my change, but I’m not a poet. I am a writer, and that feels quite nice to say. Now, someone bring me my sandals."

Join us at The Woodfield Pavilion for one or both of these shows this coming Saturday. Use the link here and get your tickets, now: 

https://www.thewoodfield.org/whatson-1/comedy-night-at-the-woodfield