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Little King’s Greater Belfast
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This is the patter and slang of Belfast, the caustic black humour of Belfast, all bent together into words and music that cut through the sleech and speak to the heart.
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What was the inspiration for this
performance?
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A few
things, I think. I wanted to write in a different way. I was a
The other
side of it would be my feelings of Belfast. Living away from Belfast for
years helped me get some perspective on how I feel about the place. Now feels
like a good time to talk about Belfast in a different way.
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How did you go about gathering the team for
it?
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When
I was starting out I asked people I knew who would be best at the job. I'm
lucky to have had my producer Michael O' Neill and director Claire Willoughby
as an outside eye from the get go. Alice Wilson was the first person I
thought of as a designer, I loved working with her on The Forbidden Experiment. The original musicians were all great
players who joined in as a favour, and I cannot be more grateful to them for
all they put in to those first goes at it in rehearsal rooms and scratch
nights. When we got a little further on, strength of word of mouth and buzz
around the show meant our team got bigger, with the likes of the Cairn String
Quartet or Julian Corrie (aka Miaoux Miaoux as album producer) joining. As
well as Simon Hayes our lighting designer. But now with the fringe, I feel
like the team is even bigger, extending to kind people in the Tron who helped
me make the work, and now the Traverse!
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How did you become interested in making
performance?
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I
think it was mostly thanks to the company I kept really. When I
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Was your process typical of the way that
you make a performance?
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The
process for Greater Belfast was
completely new to me. It mixes composition, songwriting, writing words and
considering performance. It's a real mix, a mix of everything I've been
interested in over the years finally coming together really. The process was
like jigsaw pieces finally falling together.
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What do you hope that the audience will
experience?
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I
hope they imagine Belfast vividly, and feel connected to it. The work jumps,
sometimes quite quickly, from emotion to emotion. I want the humour of
Belfast to be felt, the hope of the future and the pain of the past. I’ve
chucked a couple of songs from the show online to give people a bit of a
taste – https://little-king.bandcamp.com/
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What strategies did you consider towards
shaping this audience experience?
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When
I was writing the work I constantly asked myself “what do I want the audience
to feel at this point?” nearly everything is geared toward that question. The
composition of the music, my performance, the words, the lighting. I worked
really hard to make sure that what I want the audience to feel is clear, and
felt keenly.
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Do you see your work within any particular
tradition?
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The
performance I make is a blend of familiar things, done in a very personal and
idiosyncratic way. It's a gig/theatre piece down the line. The form is as
important to me as the content, and messing around with ones idea of what an
album or theatre piece is, is very exciting. In my head I make albums. But
they're weird albums admittedly...
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