Tongue Fu in association with No Ordinary Experience present:
Animal (Are You a Proper Person?)
WORLD PREMIERE
Gilded Balloon Tevoit, Nightclub, 4 – 28 Aug 2016 (not 15 & 22), 5.30pm (6.30pm)
Featuring farcical storytelling, action film crushes, pub-science, awkward one night stands, home-made graphs and high energy music from the Tongue Fu musicians, Animal (Are You a Proper Person?) is a comedic cross-genre show which explores self-empowerment, friendship, and learning to live with the choices we make.
Anna Freeman – (co-writer and co-performer) – Animal (Are You a Proper Person?), Tongue Fu
What was the inspiration for this performance?
Chris and I realised, through boozy pub conversations, that we both had funny stories from our childhoods that featured mild humiliation, music lessons and metaphorical animals. The rest of the show grew from that.
How did you go about gathering the team for it?
Chris and I knew we wanted to write together. We developed the music with the Tongue Fu band, because Chris works with them regularly. They’re amazingly intuitive and so talented, I was in awe watching them. The music is definitely a big team effort; it’s full of comic references. The final show is me, Chris and Dave O’Brien (our brilliant one man orchestra).
How did you become interested in making performance?
I expect I didn’t get enough attention as a child.
Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?
Well, I’d never worked with music before, besides being a guest poet for Tongue Fu. So lots of it was all new for me. When we started I’d never learned an instrument and now I’m learning three. And although Chris and I had done some collaborative writing before, this was the first big project for both of us. It’s been a brilliant experience. He’s taught me loads about musicality, and he says I’ve taught him how to edit himself. It’s been really good for both of us, I think.
What do you hope that the audience will experience?
The show is supposed to be funny, joyous, ramshackle and loud. There are moments of introspection, and the content, the ideas around self-identity and choice, is hopefully relatable to everyone. I hope the audience will have fun, mostly. That’s what we’ve been having in development.
What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?
In writing, anything that made us laugh, especially things that feel real and funny both at once, went into the script. There’s a bit of audience interaction – nothing scary – because we want the audience to be with us, to be part of the show. We just thought about what we would want to see if we were in the audience. We also had a lot of great advice from our dramaturg, Ross Sutherland, and our director, Sita Calvart-Ennals.
Do you see your work within any particular tradition?
Animal is the first full length show to come from the Tongue Fu model of storytelling and poetry over improvised music. Tongue Fu is a riotous experiment, and Animal grew from that. I think it retains some of its joyfully anarchic roots.
Gilded Balloon Tevoit, Nightclub, 4 – 28 Aug 2016 (not 15 & 22), 5.30pm (6.30pm)
No comments :
Post a Comment