A.L. KENNEDY	Download Full Press Release (1.5MB)
PRESENT TENSE Previews 30th July / 1st August (16:00) Click Here to Book Tickets Now!	Download Hi-Resolution image (302KB)

Venue:      Stand 2 Dates:       2 - 24 August Time:        16:00 Tickets:    £8 / £7

A.L. Kennedy, who is both bloody funny and the current possessor of the Costa (formerly Whitbread) prize for fiction for her novel Day, is probably the only successful comedian / novelist in the world...

She has spent the last twelve months touring exotic locations, including Hastings, Berlin, Lanark and South Queensferry, and has brought her comedy to packed houses at the Edinburgh Book Festival and the Cambridge Wordfest.

She is now back at The Stand for her third year running with an all-new show. Twelve months of distressing professional success for Kennedy have taken their toll and her levels of tension are now more than usually high as she anticipates a meteorite strike or freak shark attack to balance her good fortune.

Present Tense allows Kennedy to explore a few of her favourite sources of tension including childhood terrors to teenage horrors, but mainly dwelling far too long on the difficulties of living as a adult in a world which is improperly labelled and unfit for purpose.

Economic collapse beckons: If Gordon Brown was going to buy us all a present – with our own money – why did he make it Northern Rock? Ferrero Rocher would have been fine.

The Pentagon's roots are quite literally insane, protests against this and that continue (are helicopters attracted to political demonstrations the way wasps are attracted to jam? Would a huge jar of jam draw off helicopter surveillance?) Disaster movie scenarios of the 1970's have apparently become everyday life at the start of the 21st Century and sun-dried tomatoes are taken seriously when surely they are just fruit someone left outside for three months and in a civilised country that would mean they were;

a) compost?
b) thrown away?
c) eaten by the vampiric, many-legged piranahs roaming our sewer systems?

(Would being eaten by piranahs raise the value of the tomatoes – in the way that being eaten by a squirrel is the key element in the development of the most expensive coffee in the world?)

And, of course, just when you think you have some bits of life figured out you have to leave – perhaps to Nowhere, perhaps to Hell, perhaps to Somewhere. Somewhere you'll get pestered by Derek Acorah and the Psychic Barber. Life, and perhaps the Afterlife, being full of people trying to sell you things that don't exist while taking things from you that do.

Kennedy also explores – and mainly abandons - methods of stress reduction – drink, drugs, hamsters - and remains undecided whether sex increases or decreases nervous hysteria.

The show will be the usual mix of dark, fast-moving, intelligently crafted observational humour. The audience will be spoken to kindly, possibly asked for advice and encouraged to leave and lead a more positive life, or to embrace paranoia in a positive way, or to embrace their fears and make them more enjoyable.

Click here to book tickets now!

www.a-l-kennedy.co.uk