Alyson Henry

My piece is a sketch featuring comedians Steffan Alun and Eleri Morgan. It looks at the comedy scene in Cardiff.

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Posted by: Creative Cardiff

Date: 1 September 2020

Find the audio description below and click for Welsh or English subtitles for the video. 

My piece is a sketch featuring comedians Steffan Alun and Eleri Morgan. It looks at the comedy scene in Cardiff.

In the sketch, we see Steffan and Eleri as they try to fill out an application form for an arts grant. It doesn’t go very well. They often become distracted by the task at hand and end up bickering. We hear them talk about how close knit the Welsh language comedy scene is, venues they’ve gigged at in Cardiff and why Welsh is better than English for insulting people. 

In the edit process for this video I’ve played a lot with framing and negative space. Sometimes we see a shot of one comedian alone on screen as they react to what the other one is saying. We see alot of blank space on and off throughout the video. 

During the pandemic we’ve all felt a sense of lacking and we’ve had to become used to an absence of certain daily norms in our lives. We’ve also had a collective weight on our shoulders knowing that several parts of society have had to operate despite a lack of adequate resources. I wanted to reflect this sense of absence in the way the scenes are displayed. 

I’ve also included some shots of the city of Cardiff showing the empty streets during lockdown. We see several places mentioned by the comedians including Cardiff Castle and Caroline Street (or ‘chippy lane’.) 

We also see an empty theatre in Chapter Arts and the deserted main stage of the Glee Club. Showing these venues stand idle during moments in which the comedians struggle to come up with good ideas reflects the important role art spaces play in terms of fostering creativity.

Audio description read by Alyson Henry:

Find out more about Alyson Henry and the other Our Creative Cardiff 2020 creatives here.