Three Weeks interview
August 2005

I’m joined now by the Dutch Elm Conservatoire. Good afternoon, Gentlemen.

All: Good afternoon.

Would you like to first of all introduce yourself, and tell us who’s missing?

Renton: My name’s Renton, and I play Ian in our show.

Rufus: I’m Rufus, and I play Mr Harrison.

Jim: And I’m Jim, and I play Brown. And missing are Steve, who plays Gene, and Jordan who plays Callaghan. They’ve had to go down to London.

So I guess, basic question, what’s your play about?

Renton: It’s about five conspiracy theory hunters, who work out of an office in Bracknell based above an estate agents. And we solve conspiracy theories for any number of clients, from the government, to the Vatican, to members of the public who come in and ask of this service. And think that’s the basic outline of it. We’re five main characters and we play about 25 other characters on top of that as well.

With so many characters to portray, do you ever get confused about who you are?

Rufus: Well, it’s not that difficult to follow, to be honest, and the nature of sketch comedy is that it’s all relatively disposable. In terms of problems with schizophrenia in the group, I can confirm we are all relatively compos mentis. And it works out to about 5 or 6 characters each.

Jim: From a practical point of view, we have one costume that we wear each throughout the show, and then we just build on that with very small key props such as hats … and just hand-props … to avoid lots of unnecessary changing and silly wigs and so on. So it’s a very minimalist design.

Renton: Having said that, there are a couple of silly wigs.

Jim: You’ve gotta have a couple of silly wigs in every show.

Silly wigs aside, can I ask where the name “Dutch Elm Conservatoire” came from?

Jim: It started out that we were quite interested in calling something a “Conservatoire”. One of those words that you don’t really hear very much anymore. The “Dutch Elm” bit was added during a misheard conversation in a pub. None of us are actually entirely sure how it came about, but it became “Dutch Elm Conservatoire” – it was written down on a pad, and it just kinda stuck.  Three years down the line … probably could have chosen something a bit simpler… but we’re stuck with it.

Rufus: There has been confusion, we played the Etcetera Theatre in Camden last year, where we were labelled the “Laboratoire Garnier Experiment”. Which we were quite disappointed not to have come up with, actually.

Jim: Yeah. It’s actually a slightly better name.

Renton: We could have saved a fortune in terms of finance. We could have got some good sponsorship from Garnier … but we missed that one.

Jim: What ends up happening, is people abbreviate our name. Most people just call us “Dutch Elm”, but there seems to be a thing amongst Edinburgh performers of calling us “The Elmers”. As in, I don’t know, Elmer Fudd I guess. Or “DEC”.

Rufus: …or “Bernstein”.

Jim: I’ve never heard that one!

What do you get up to in Edinburgh when you’re not on the stage?

Renton: Well, Rufus and I wandered down to HMV a few days ago, and bought five DVDs for £30. We bought “Roadhouse” starring Patrick Swayze, “Apollo 13”, “School of Rock”, “The Long Good Friday” and “Fame” … and we’ve watched all of them. Also we go to the gym. That’s about it.

Rufus: ...and we watch other shows, of course. We’re not living in a bubble. We’ve seen some terrific shows.

Jim: It’s been different this year, though, because last year our show was on at 11pm, and we found that we’d come off stage at midnight and then go out for a few hours, then end up going to bed at sort of 6am and then getting up at 4pm! Whereas this year the show’s on at 5pm, Pleasance Courtyard – there’s a a plug, there – and so we come off stage at 6pm, and obviously you have the whole evening … and I actually do another show myself at 9:20pm. But it’s been very different this year, hasn’t it, to last year?

Renton: I think last year, because it was the first time we’d come up as a group, we wanted to establish ourselves in the comedy community. So we felt like … certainly for me, anyway … felt like I had to be out until 4 or 5 in the morning. And I don’t drink, so that’s boring. This year, I haven’t felt quite that pressure, so I’ve just been doing a lot more of my own stuff.  I’ve really really enjoyed it this year, so far – it’s been good fun.

So where, when can people come and see your show?

Jim: We are the Dutch Elm Conservatoire in “Conspiracy”, it’s on at 5pm in the Pleasance Courtyard, every day apart from the 15th.

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