KAREN DUNBAR has hit the road with her new show and is coming to Dumfries this week.
The actress and comedian rose to fame on the BBC series Chewin’ the Fat, and was subsequently given her own show by the channel, The Karen Dunbar Show.
Now Karen is taking her experiences on tour with ‘An Evening With Karen Dunbar’, which brings her to Dumfries’ Easterbrook Hall on Thursday night where she share stories from her life and talking about her career,as well as bringing back some of her most irreverent characters.
The show began its life as audience Q and A pre-pandemic but when it restarted it began to evolve into its own thing, as Karen explained: “I started telling stories as set pieces and so how it’s running now we let the interview part go because the interviewer was asking me less and less questions. And there was one night when I was doing it in a hotel and it was packed and I was aware because of the layout of things that people at the back couldn’t see me, so I stood up and told the stories and then at the next one I thought I’m just going to stand up and tell the stories and it became very literal, so it’s not so much stand-up comedy as it is me standing up.
“So this new tour I’m on just started like that, I wanted to go on and tell my stories so in some ways it’s new but in some ways it’s not. I’ve never come from a stand-up background, although I have done it in the past but it was never something I did regularly so I was always really tentative about it but because I’ve kind of grown into this I’m really enjoying it.”
Thursday’s show will be Karen’s first in Dumfries, and as a Burns fan she is looking forward to the visit as well as experiencing a new audience, she continued: ” I’ve never been to Dumfries before, so I’m over the moon, I’m really really looking forward to it. It’s great going back to places I’ve been before seeing people but I love going somewhere new. I just feel like I’ve got a blank canvas and I feel it when people are being receptive when it’s somewhere new, don’t get me wrong people can be receptive anywhere but as a performer you’ve got to kind of prove yourself as well. I get a lot of connection with people because of Chewin’ the Fat but that won’t get through an hour and a half, so you’ve got to work at that when you’re in a new place.”
