Kill Dramaturgy Now

 Kill Me Now is a digital, dramatic experience performed as a real life live Zoom webinar written by award winning playwright Rhiannon Boyle. This funny, heart wrenching one woman play, developed in lockdown specifically for a virtual audience, explores a new form taking live performance to a place we have never EVER been before. An innovative, hilarious yet poignant production which will be presented in collaboration with critically acclaimed Welsh new writing theatre company Dirty Protest.

And for the first predictable question: what was the inspiration for your show?

The story and the themes of the play lie very close to my heart as someone who lost my father after years of him suffering with the long term degenerative disease MS. I wanted to write a play about losing my Dad but because I have a very dark sense of humour, I wanted it to be funny. 

My producers, Dirty Protest, and I spoke about the main character maybe giving a TED talk or being an expert in the one thing she has no idea how to deal with – her grief. That’s why I decided to make her an undertaker who is selling the franchise model of her business Joyful Endings Funerals, which is basically end-of-life celebrations that are more ‘fun’ than funeral.

 

 

How far does it fit within your usual work, and do you have a particular dramaturgical approach to creating a production?

I like dark comedy and so I suppose all my writing explores heavy themes in way that always find the light and humour. When I create I usually start by exploring the thing that I want to say. What’s the argument? What’s the issue? What’s the thing that’s made me angry or sad? I then do lots of work on the characters writing pages and pages on their past, personality traits, their hopes and fears. 

When I’ve done all that I get to the story. My mantra is - spew then sculpt. I get it all out onto the page and then I’ll go back and look at how it fits into the Five Act Structure. Where is the inciting incident? Midpoint? Climax? What’s the character’s journey and how do they change? After all that it’s time to hand it over and get an outside opinion; a dramaturg or a director who I can really trust to help me develop it further.

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?

Not really. I write for TV, radio, theatre and now online. I like mixing it up and practicing different disciplines for different mediums and platforms.

 

What are you hoping that the audience will experience?

 

The play is a comedy set in covid times and will offer audiences some much needed fun and relief. The play deals with the themes of grief and so we will reach out and connect with audiences and communities experiencing grief at this time - whether that be grieving loved ones, grieving theatrical experiences or grieving our old lives. We are living in a time where we are all collectively grieving and connecting with others and making sense of it all whilst finding the light and humour can be a very powerful healing process.

 

 

How have you found the challenge of creating a production online? Has it been positive or negative and have there been any surprises?

It’s been brilliant fun. We tested the show out on a live audience and they absolutely loved it! I think because we’ve purposefully written this play for Zoom as a live Zoom webinar using all its interactive features it just really works. This is NOT online theatre. It’s a dramatic, digital, interactive experience and we can’t wait to share it with new audiences.

I have always asked about the role of theatre in public debate, but this now seems even more relevant. In the current landscape, what does theatre or performance have to give to the public sphere?

Hope. Connection. If we’ve learned anything during this pandemic it’s that everything around us – economies, services, industries and infrastructures – are so fragile. When everything ground to a halt and ceased, for me, it was connection to other human beings that kept me going. Love, compassion, kindness and trying to make sense of it all together.

 

Ithaca: on demand

 Ithaca 

Edinburgh Fringe On Demand - Friday 6th – Monday 30th August 2021 

Ithaca is an autobiographical feminist one-woman adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey from writer  

and performer Phoebe Angeni. Exploring contemporary social issues, Ithaca follows the journey  of Nobody, a feminine aspect of Odysseus, as she re-defines her relationship with self and  

home. Fantasy and reality merge in this new dynamic and darkly comic production about 

Nobody’s journey to find home, while creating space and a voice for herself within a world and  

body, which seem to forcefully reject her. 

Ithaca is a stage-for-screen production where black box theatre meets experimental film. While  the play draws heavily from Homer’s work, Angeni has taken its broad themes and used them to  tell her own story, having always related to the obstacles Odysseus faces. By playing a female  

version of Odysseus as well as embodying the invisible monsters, she is able to represent her  

authentic experience and place the fuller figured female body in a position of heroism. 

Through the lens of an unconventional heroine, Ithaca examines crucial social issues such as fat 

phobia, bullying, domestic harassment, mental health, chronic illness and immigration. Sadly  

these are all things Angeni has experienced herself having had to go to court to get a lifetime  

restraining order for domestic harassment against her biological father, her experience of  

immigration difficulties between the UK and US and her anxiety issues and depression no doubt  exacerbated by her class at school forming the ‘I Hate Fat Phoebe’ club. Angeni has been able  

to move through her traumas and aims for this work to be a positive portrayal of what is  

possible when you overcome obstacles!  

And for the first predictable question: what was the inspiration for your show?

Since I first picked it up at about age twelve, I’ve been inspired by Homer’s Odyssey. Thirteen or so years and a handful of translations later and I still resonate with Odysseus’ journey towards home and selfhood in the face of great challenges. I’ve always wanted to create a work based on The Odyssey, and when the pandemic hit and lockdowns began I decided it was finally time to check this show off my bucket list!

 

How far does it fit within your usual work, and do you have a particular dramaturgical approach to creating a production?

Much of my work so far has involved Classical texts; however, this piece is a major departure in the fact that, as a poet, it is the first full play I’ve written. As a performer, it’s also a change and introspective challenge to be playing a character based on myself rather than one that someone else has written for me. In addition, this is the first play I’ve produced and directed; however, I have previously produced and directed short films, which very much came in handy given the fact that Ithaca is a digital piece.

In terms of my general approach to creating a production, I can be quite eclectic. I have sub-threshold ADHD, so my first step is always to create focus by setting out plot structure and detailed thoughts/aims for my work scene by scene. This initial outline allows me to jump around within the show as I research and new ideas come to me. I then piece the project together, re-arranging my thoughts like puzzle pieces until they take their final shape.

For Ithaca, I broke down Homer’s epic into its main events and themes, picked out the chapters central to Odysseus, transposed my life story into the place of Odysseus’, and then ran with it. I wanted to create a show that brings Classical Epic into the contemporary age. Ithaca is a piece that experiments with theatrical format and conventions, that raises awareness for social issues, and that anyone can watch and resonate with – whether or not they have read The Odyssey.

 

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?

I’d say the best way to describe my work is experimental. I’m inspired by Classical texts, mythology, and physical theatre. I love to link history with the modern-day and I enjoy emphasising the body as geography within which I can explore current socio-political issues. 

Poetry and experimental film also both inform the style in which I present my work, as I focus heavily on how my text sounds, how the lines of dialogue bounce with one another, and how I can create a visually evocative experience. I’m also especially inspired by surrealism and other artistic genres that seek to explore the subconscious and lines between fantasy and reality.

 

What are you hoping that the audience will experience?

Ithaca takes place in a very intimate space and features techniques and effects designed to be absorptive, so I’m hoping that the audience feels as if they’re in the room with me as I perform the show. 

I hope the experience will be inspiring and thought-provoking both in terms of the style of the show and the social issues featured within the plot. If audience members resonate with the journey of my central character, Nobody, I hope that they will feel her strength and that they will leave the show with a sense of catharsis, empowerment, and hope.

 

 

How have you found the challenge of creating a production online? Has it been positive or negative and have there been any surprises?

Creating a digital show has definitely been a challenge, but it has also given me the amazing opportunity to expand my knowledge of pre and post-production. Since the pandemic, I found myself as a one-woman operation both on and off-stage and the format of creating a digital piece allowed me to not only write and perform Ithaca, but also to direct, film, and edit the show.

 Having my hand in every element of production allowed me to shape the show into a distilled expression of my creative vision. The most difficult aspect of production was operating in a sixteen square foot room with fairly limited technology and only myself as both performer and camera operator. The challenges and restrictions I faced throughout production, however, also pushed me to think outside of my expectations and create a piece that ultimately took on a life of its own!

 

I have always asked about the role of theatre in public debate, but this now seems even more relevant. In the current landscape, what does theatre or performance have to give to the public sphere?

I believe in theatre’s gift of perspective and empathetic connection. In a world both recovering from and still amidst a pandemic, connection is something that we all deeply crave and throughout this past couple of years connection has increasingly come from digital platforms. 

Theatre has always given its audiences something great to be a part of – a community, a story, a space. Digital theatre will not replace live shows, but it democratises performance, both connecting artists across the globe and ensuring that communities with accessibility requirements aren’t left behind as traditional spaces re-open.

At its best, theatre is by and for the people and should reflect our truth, bring us together, and advocate for a better future. Theatre is for socio-political examination, to reflect the light and shadow of society, and theatre is also for experimentation – to show the world its potential.

Title Ithaca 

Performance Dates Friday 6th – Monday 30th August 2021 

Available on demand 

Running Time 60 minutes 

Box Office Tickets are available from www.edfringe.com priced £9 (£5) 

Instagram @phoebe.angeni, @offrecordangeni, #IthacaEdinburgh Twitter @PhoebeAngeni, #IthacaEdinburgh 

www.phoebeangeni.com/ithaca 

Think No Evil Dramaturgy of Us: David Benson @ Edfringe 2016

Think No Evil of Us: My Life With Kenneth Williams

Pleasance Dome

Aug 16 3.50pm ONE PERFORMANCE ONLY

Following its Fringe First winning debut in 1996, David Benson’s classic solo show returns to Edinburgh for a special twentieth anniversary performance.

This classic one-man show unlocks the character of one of Britain's best-loved and most-missed entertainers. In this thrilling and hilarious tour de force we see Kenneth Williams at his funniest - and at his most badly behaved. David Benson’s uncanny impersonation was also heard in the acclaimed BBC Radio 4 series, The Private World of Kenneth Williams.

Following its Fringe First winning debut at the Edinburgh Festival in 1996, Think No Evil Of Us played in the West End and toured extensively. Now it returns for a special one off twentieth anniversary performance in an updated version. The show continues to prove its enduring popularity both with audiences who loved Kenneth Williams and those who know nothing of his work.

This brilliantly performed semi autobiographical show also reveals how David's unusual childhood led to an extraordinary connection with the Carry On star.

What was the inspiration for this performance?

This is a show that I first wrote and performed twenty years ago, at the 1996 Fringe. The initial inspiration brought to a close many years of pondering the question of ‘What subject can I find that will allow me to try out on stage all the un-tested skills I have been keeping to myself all these years?’ I was thirty-four and felt that if I were to leave it any longer, it would be too late to make my mark. The subject of the life, or rather, the character of Kenneth Williams came suddenly, on seeing a South Bank Show about him in late 1994. At that point, though his Diaries had been published, no-one had performed a show about him and since I had a facility for impersonating his voice, I decided that this was the ideal subject for my debut. 

How did you go about gathering the team for it?

Having settled on my subject, I began gathering research materials and immersing myself in the man’s mind. His Diaries and Letters had been published and there was any amount of recorded material available for studying his delivery. 

Once into my researches, I soon did what I almost always do with my best ideas: talked myself out of it. An innate lack of self-confidence and perpetual sense of foreboding that had hampered my self-expression to this time, once again over-came me and faced with the immense task of condensing this complex man’s life into a 75-minute show the difficulties seemed suddenly insuperable. 

I decided instead to turn to another subject I had been long toying with: a memoir of growing up in Birmingham, hiding my nascent homosexuality and dealing with a violently mentally-ill Mother. 

I soon talked myself out of that too. But in the final weeks before the premiere and with the script as yet unformed, I hastily threw it all together, Kenneth Williams, ‘mad mother’ and all into one show. Thankfully, and against all logic, it worked.

How did you become interested in making performance?

From at least the age of seven I had a mental image of myself stepping out onto a stage and enthralling an audience with my brilliance. It took me thirty-four years to work out what I would say when I got there. When I did commit at last, I drew on everything I had learned from the performers I has studied and revered all my life. Perhaps seeing some my heroes perform live as an adolescent – Spike Milligan, Morecambe and Wise, Barry Humphries – inspired in me the ambition to attempt to create work of my own one day.

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?

It was the template for what followed, with all my later works. Once one has decided on a subject, you throw yourself at it, learn all you can and think deep, making connections and finding resonances, particularly emotional ones. To me, creating a narrative is essentially making an emotional structure for the story, so that you take the audience on a journey of feelings as much as ideas.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

I always hope that the audience will be surprised, challenged, provoked, pleasured and ultimately, moved. If you can touch an audience’s emotions you have really done the true job of theatre; an audience that has cried will never forget your work.

To provoke an audience’s emotions you have first to examine your own. It is not a process you can fake. In researching and thinking about a new subject, one must be highly cognisant of how and why your emotions are, hopefully, touched. In doing so you may hit upon a truth that you can then share with your audience so that they are touched, in turn. 

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

I was anxious to avoid clichés and the obvious in creating this show. My ethos was, ‘No one has written a rule book on how to make a solo show. I can do anything I want and say whatever I want as long as it does not bore.’

My aim was give the audience not what they thought they wanted but something they would actually enjoy even more. I avoided direct quotes from Williams’ writing and only used familiar anecdotes to illustrate how he himself used them, as a form of mask. 

I was clear from the start that I did not want to do a show in which I simply played Kenneth Williams but also to perform as myself and use autobiographical material in order to make the show a personal experience for me and for the audience.

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?

My prime inspiration for the performance style of much of Think No Evil of Us was the great American actress Ruth Draper (1884-1956) whose techniques of ‘peopling’ her bare stages with the bustling activity of many characters in widely-varying locations, all created solely through her brilliant writing and acting and her gift her harnessing the audience’s complete attention, I discovered from recordings and manuscripts. To me this seemed the ultimate in pure ‘total’ theatre and I wanted to try it out for myself. I was delighted to find that I could, in a small way, do it too and I keep Draper’s example and inspiration close to my heart and draw on her genius whenever I create new solo work.

David Benson most recently played Boris Johnson in Boris: World King (Edinburgh and Trafalgar Studios) which is also playing through the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2016. He is best known for his many solo shows including the Fringe First award-winning Lockerbie: Unfinished Business. He played the Head Waiter in the original National Theatre production One Man, Two Guvnors with James Corden, completing over one thousand performances. Recent appearances include Doctor Who, as Frankie Howerd in the BBC Radio 4 play Frankie Takes a Trip, as Dracula with the Fitzrovia Radio Hour (Mercury, Colchester) and Nurse Nellie Nightshift in Sleeping Beauty (Theatre Royal Winchester). He played Noel Coward in the BBC series Goodnight Sweetheart and is a regular multi-voiced performer in the long-running audio series Iris Wildthyme and The Scarifyers.

Seabright Productions is an award-winning commercial theatre production company based in London’s West End. They have

brought over 200 shows to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, including international hit and Olivier Award nominee Potted Potter,

two plays directed by Steven Berkoff, five Scotsman Fringe First award winning premieres and two plays as part of the world

premiere of London’s Shakespeare’s Globe Fringe debut in 2015. In 2016 they were the recipient of an Olivier Award for Best Family and Entertainment for the West End run of Showstopper! The Improvised Musical. www.seabrights.com

This Evil Dramaturgy: Michael Mears @ Edfringe 2016

THIS EVIL THING

New Town Theatre  Aug 4-28th

January 1916: Bert Brocklesby is a young schoolteacher, and preacher at his local Methodist church; Bertrand Russell is one of the greatest mathematicians of his time. With the advent of military conscription their worlds are about to be turned upside down.

THIS EVIL THING is the compelling, shocking and inspiring story of the men who said no to war: a rarely told story involving a dizzying journey from a chapel in Yorkshire to the House of Commons; from an English country garden to a quarry in Aberdeen; from a cell in Richmond Castle to a firing squad in France.

‘18? You’re too young to have a conscience!’

With military conscription still in force in many countries today, and prisoners of conscience still languishing in jails, the questions posed by THIS EVIL THING are as relevant and urgent as they were one hundred years ago.

What was the inspiration for this performance?

I have been researching the subject of Britain's First World War conscientious objectors for about five years now,
and concious that there was going to be so much in the way of commemoration during this time that focused on those who fought in the war, I was passionate to create a piece of drama that told the far less well-known story of the war resisters, those who said no to war - at great risk to themselves.  

It is an intensely fascinating story involving as it does, not only the C.O.s themselves and their struggle to be exempted from military conscription, but the men and women who couldn't be called up themselves, but devoted themselves and their time during the war to supporting the C.O.s cause - for example, Bertrand Russell - who himself was imprisoned in 1918 for six months, for an article he wrote. 

The story is so much about the preservation of Britain's great traditions of freedom of speech and thought, and the ways in which these were under threat of serious erosion because of the war and its insatiable demands.

How did you go about gathering the team for it?

I chose a director who had a track record of solo work, Ros Hutt, who was intensely sympathetic to the subject matter, and a sound designer Mark Noble and stage manager Jane Andrews who I had worked with recently and who I felt would make excellent contributions to the piece.  

My set designer Mark Friend had designed a previous solo play of mine, but I only found out in the last week or two, while he was designing THIS EVIL THING, that he is in fact a Quaker -
they of course being so significant in the peace movement during WW1 and indeed many C.O.s being Quakers.  I guess that's what's called serendipity.

How did you become interested in making performance?

I have been making plays since the age of 8, for my family and my friends' families, and then at school for my class mates,
and I was subsequently fortunate to go to a comprehensive school which had drama on the curriculum (who remembers those days?)
and had two excellent drama teachers. 

I went on to train as an actor at Drama Centre, London, in the mid-70s, where I first came across the work of Rudolf Laban, and the monologues of the American character actress Ruth Draper.
In terms of making solo work, my first piece was TOMORROW WE DO THE SKY at the Traverse in the 1991 Festival, followed by SOUP, Fringe First Award winner at the Pleasance at the 1995 Festival - I wanted to create new and original pieces of solo work which broke the bounds of 'The Letters of Thomas Hardy' type solo pieces, which make rather dull theatre - I wanted to create dramatic plays with many characters, but which could be performed by just one person. 

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?

In THIS EVIL THING, the script kept changing subtly as we worked, we realised we wanted less direct audience participation, less direct narrative, and then when the nine individual wooden crates, custom-built, arrived, they exerted their own unique influence on the direction of the production, having a resonant poetic life of their own.  

I haven't previously had the experience of working so early on in the process with the final 'set', so this was something different and quite special.  I love these crates and every shape and location they conjure up.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

I hope they will be taken on a roller coaster journey which will move, shock and inspire them - as they learn about a part of the First World War which is rarely told.  

Even if they are not pacifists, I hope they will be led to question their own stance on war, peace, national defence, in the light
of the great courage of the men who said no to war.

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

We did consider getting audience directly involved in certain group scenes, so they could briefly experience what a C.O. went through, for example, at a tribunal hearing where they would be appealing for exemption from military service.  

But these moments seemed to hold up the thrust of the story and could well have set the wrong tone, or even alienate certain members of the audience.  Instead we have opted for making the story as gripping, fast moving and suspenseful as possible - which the actual events related were.

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?

The great American solo dramatic monologuist Ruth Draper (most famous between the wars) has been an important influence -
she was an influence on British performers like Joyce Grenfell.  

The idea of peopling a stage with scenery and people and yet all that is actually there is the solo performer is to me an exciting challenge, and links back to the very essence of storytelling.
The multi-character nature of my work also invites terms like shamanic or shape-shifter, or the more common 'chameleon' -
certainly, sometimes, it does feel like one is possessed by many different personalities.

Tell Me Anything about Dramaturgy: David Ralfe @ Edfringe 2016

Tell Me Anything

Summerhall (Venue 26) ​

Aug 3, 5-14, 16-28

When David was 15, he loved punk, house parties and poetry. Most of all, he loved Kate. They loved each other so much it hurt. Kate has an eating disorder. But David knows he can make her better. On The Run return, following the five-star sell-out success of their debut, So It Goes, with a show about love, hopeless devotion and growing up.

What was the inspiration for this performance?

An experience I had when I was a teenager.  When I was fifteen, I had a girlfriend who had an eating disorder.  I was the only person that knew, which made me feel responsible for her and I though it was my job to ‘save’ her.  When this didn’t happen, it left me with a lot of shame, anger and regret.

The more work we’ve done on the show, the more I’ve had to investigate myself now, as an adult.  It’s now a show that’s just as much about me now as me back then.

How did you go about gathering the team for it?

The show began as a collaboration with Hannah Moss, who is the other half of my company On The Run.  It was always intended to be a solo performance and Hannah was in the role of director for the first twelve months of development, much of which was completed with support from Camden People’s Theatre.

We then got some ACE funding for more structured development work and brought our Designer Emma Tompkins on board officially, although she’d been connected to the project unofficially from day one, as we’d worked with her before and felt she was an important part of our set up.  We also worked with an eating disorders expert, Dr Charlotte Rhind, and a live musician, Lilly Neubauer.

After a work in progress performance in September 2015, at Shoreditch Town Hall, we changed things up a bit.  Hannah was going to be abroad for twelve months, so we recruited Christopher Harrisson to take over as Director.  Chris and I trained together at the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris.  We let go of the live music element and brought on board Jon McLeod to do sound design – I’d worked with Jon on one previous show and he has loads of experience working with devising companies.  We also brought our Producer Tom Searle from Show And Tell onto the project – we were already working with him on touring work for our last show So It Goes and wanted to continue the relationship into this new project.  To complete the line up, we recruited Alex Fernandes, a Lighting Designer I’d worked with before – who also has a great background working with exciting experimental companies – as well as our go-to Stage Manager Lucy Adams.

How did you become interested in making performance?

School plays.  The fact that my school had barely any drama to offer was maybe a good thing.  There was no drama department and no teachers seemed interested, so I bullied my way into being allowed to direct plays myself.  I think this was a good introduction to how tough it is to get a project off the ground, when you’re the one leading, as well as giving me hands-on experience of putting a show together.  I’m sure the shows weren’t particularly good but it was a great chance to play around and do it ourselves.

As a student, I did a lot of theatre but also comedy, mainly stand-up, and I think what I do now is a hybrid of those two interests.  As a writer-performer, I identify a lot with comedians but I’m also happy that I can be funny if I want to be but lots of other things besides.  I also started going to the Edinburgh Fringe at that age, which is where I saw a lot of exciting work that inspired me to train at the Jacques Lecoq School.

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?

Every process is different.  But we massively underestimated how different this would be.  Hannah and I had made one show before and this was the difficult second album – difficult because we were still inexperienced but now we were putting pressure on ourselves to make something as good as the last one!  

We hadn’t anticipated how much would change when the autobiographical element was coming from me not her and how different it would be to have Hannah directing; whereas on our last show, I was in it but directing most of it too.  

This process has involved much more thinking, writing and research.  Our last show, So It Goes, was entirely devised in the room.

This show required much more interrogation of the ‘big picture’ (ie. what’s it really about and what are we trying to say?) before the smaller pieces would fit together.  In So It Goes, we just made loads of smaller pieces first and then put them in an order.

Tell Me Anything is much more psychologically complex and comes with a lot of political and ethical baggage, which So It Goes didn’t have.  The characterisation in So It Goes is very archetypal: mother, father, daughter.  In Tell Me Anything it’s much more specific and knotty.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

With any autobiographical work, the main aim is that the audience are able to relate my life to theirs in some way.  I would like Tell Me Anything to provoke questions about how we behave in relationships, which I think is fascinating and complex and a bit crazy.  Most of all, I want to start a conversation about masculinity.  

That all sounds a bit cerebral.  I think it’s just as important that the audience feel that pang of love and heartache and rage.

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

It’s a lot to do with my relationship to them and my attempts to charm them, which are sometimes genuine and at other times, slightly manipulative.  One of the features of the show is that I am an unreliable narrator, so there are moments where ‘David the writer’ is hoping you can see through what ‘David the character’ is trying to make you believe.  I hope that makes the audience less passive because they shouldn’t be taking everything at face value and will have to interrogate what’s being said to them.

I think they might also dislike me for quite a lot of the story, so there’s something about alienating the audience and then trying to win them back – without making it into a popularity contest.  

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?

The contemporary trend I identify with most is confessional writing in literary ‘fiction’.  I Love Dick by Chris Kraus is another very frank account of the crazy things love will make you do. Kraus’s book Aliens and Anorexia was a huge influence on this show; partly because it deals with eating disorders but mainly because my reading of it is that she knows that she is an unreliable narrator.  

The Vegetarian, a novel by Han Kang which won the Man Booker International Prize this year, was another big influence.  It’s about anorexia but also about patriarchy, food and culture.  The fact that the female protagonist, flawed though she is, is not portrayed as a victim, was an important lesson for me.  

It’s maybe relevant that I can think of more literary influences that theatrical ones.  There’s something introspective about novels which is perhaps more pertinent to Tell Me Anything than most plays or performance.  Perhaps that’s why we arrived a such a text-based, story-telling style.

More broadly, I would place my work in a tradition of devising that, in my case, comes from the Jacques Lecoq School. Our last show, So It Goes, had a very Lecoq feel to it.  But I don’t think Lecoq equipped Chris or I to deal with material that was this psychologically or politically complex.  Chris and I are really drawing on our university backgrounds when we talk about that side of things, and we’ve had to develop a theatrical style to cope with that, which is very much more text-based that anything we learned at Lecoq. 

Kitchen Cabaret Dramaturgy: JoJo Bellini @ Edfringe 2016

JoJo Bellini's Kitchen Cabaret

The Stand Comedy Club 2

Aug 4-14, 16-28 1.20pm

Join JoJo Bellini for a hilarious show filled with fun, food and the songs of Tom Jones.

What was the inspiration for this performance?

It is a reflection of the state of entertainment. Performance should be a celebration. Performance can also approach serious subjects and make audiences think on certain topics but first and foremost it is to entertain. The inspiration for me with Kitchen Cabaret was to create a silly, saucy show where we can all feel good for an hour and enjoy ourselves.

How did you go about gathering the team for it?

My team has been vast, singing lessons, consultations with cabaret artists, previews with friends and family. All people I have met through the industry have been instrumental in creating this piece

How did you become interested in making performance?

For me the interest in making performance has come from a need to share love and joy to people. To take audiences on a fun filled journey that takes them away from the horrors of the world. 

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?

First it comes with a ridiculous idea when I hear a song. Then before I know it there are 9 other songs that go with it (including ridiculous ways of performing it) that creates a show. With this show it all stemmed from the fact that I was listening to Thunderball by Tom Jones whilst blending soup in my kitchen. Then the idea to do a cabaret show where I cooked, sang and danced for the audience whilst singing the songs of my favourite singer Tom Jones was born!

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

Laughter and the pure joy of Jazz Hands

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

What the audience are doing, thinking and experiencing throughout the performance is important to me. With cabaret especially it is about the intimacy and trust you share with your audience. 

Do you see your work within any particular tradition? 

Most definitely with Vaudeville. A variety of hilarious and saucy things that produces great entertainment.