Nina Conti
- 52 years old
- English
- Actor, writer, ventriloquist and director
Press clippings Page 12
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Ben Williams, Time Out, 10th July 2015Review: Nina Conti, Theatre Royal, Brighton
Wonderfully funny evening with a comedian-ventriloquist at the top of her game.
Thomas H. Green, The Arts Desk, 20th May 2015Review: Nina Conti in In Your Face
There are some absolutely hysterically funny gems in this show and it will be different each night, with new masks and new performers, so there can be no spoilers.
Kate Herbert, The Herald, 1st April 2015Nina Conti interview
When she first started using masks a few years ago, she had a stooge in the audience. "It worked great, but it was cheating."
Stephanie Bunbury, Sydney Morning Herald, 26th March 2015Comedy review: Nina Conti, Glasgow
While the set is strewn with items such as a ladder, a red phone and a massive banana, they are mere diversions from the real deal: a set of puppetry masks perched on mic stands, waiting to be attached to the faces of four semi-willing front-row audience members.
Brian Donaldson, The Scotsman, 20th March 2015Nina Conti Clowning Around, BBC Four, review
Ventriloquist fails to 'find' her clown, reduced to 'tears of...'
Tom Birchenough, The Arts Desk, 16th March 2015Radio Times review
The brilliant Nina Conti puts herself through the mill here - and produces a funny, sharp documentary about clowning and the way a phobia of clowns has spread to the point where it threatens a whole comic tradition.
Conti is a successful ventriloquist, but decides she should put her skills to use entertaining sick children in hospitals, via a charity that provides "clown doctors". So begins a surprisingly tough process of training, discovering her inner clown and spiralling into an artistic crisis about the wellsprings of comedy.
"How can I go on stage in front of hundreds of people and be fine, but faced with a single child I feel a total fraud?" she asks. As so often, it's her straight-talking Monkey puppet (slash alter ego) that provides the answer: "Because that's all smoke and mirrors, Nina. This is real."
David Butcher, Radio Times, 15th March 2015Nina Conti: Clowning Around, TV review
We know laughter is the best medicine, but who knew that comedy's medical ethics could be so tricky?
Ellen E. Jones, The Independent, 15th March 2015Preview: Nina Conti: Clowning Around, BBC Four
While Clowning Around isn't quite as personal as Her Master's Voice, it does give an insight into a side of clowning that we rarely see.
Bruce Dessau, Beyond The Joke, 11th March 2015Nina Conti's latest comedy project about clowning
Nina Conti's new documentary, Clowning Around, is to be broadcast on BBC Four on March 15. This follows her directorial debut, Her Master's Voice, which won a Grierson Award and a BAFTA nomination. In this new film Conti tells the story of her two year stint as a hospital clown.
Bruce Dessau, Beyond The Joke, 3rd March 2015