Lloyd Henning and Peter Sutton studied Computer Science at the University of Manchester and formed Foxdog Studios as an IT company which has led to many endeavours including a comedy act. What started as entertaining their friends with tech they built, led to acts that combine live comedy and technology. Their upcoming show in Salford, Robot Chef, is their cooking show in which the audience draw cartoon characters on their phones to control the Robot Chef. With so many cooks, “the cooking doesn’t work very well, so you have to laugh”. Winner of the Leicester Comedy Festival’s Best Show 2019, Robot Chef includes music, audience participation and cooking sausages.
Henning and Sutton explained that their shows are alternative comedy, at university their impression of comedy was “just stand up” but there’s more to it than that. Robot Chef is a chance to see other kinds of comedy, this time with the twist of technology created by IT professionals.
The Foxdog Studios duo will return to Edinburgh Fringe this year. Looking back on their first Fringe experience and their performance skills they candidly admitted “we sucked when we started, but we had a lot of enthusiasm”, it was certainly a learning curve. Henning and Sutton have performed at all types of venues including science festivals like Bluedot (they will be returning this year). Although the show is very technical, they are done on a low budget, they bring their own equipment (and play an electric drum kit).
The duo explained: “we always make the point of making our shows as approachable as possible” and so “you don’t have to know everything about technology”. However, they also commented that “there’s nothing like getting off stage and having a nerd coming to complain about what you’ve done wrong”.
Robot Chef will be on at Social 7 in Salford on 30th April with a 25% student discounts on the tickets.
