Thursday 14 July 2016

Dark Dramaturgy: Skrimshanks @ Edfringe 2016

Assembly George Square Theatre Omnitorium      
22:30 (23:30) 3-28 Aug (Not 16, 22)

You were raised to believe anything was possible. To never to settle for second best. Follow your heart. Now it's time to live the dream and you can't even get an interview for an unpaid internship. 

From the depths of somewhere dark and unpleasant, two distorted freaks scamper to the surface ready to hold a mirror up to your paltry existence. The frivolous frailty of your fragile life. Face your fears, laugh at your weaknesses. Skip into the night, lighter, unburdened. Witness our beautiful, disgusting bouffon double act. An exhilarating, hilariously confrontational satire on the human condition.


What was the inspiration for this performance?
Essentially we wanted to put on lots of makeup and maternity tights, stuff foam into the maternity tights and then prance about. We've been looking for reasons to justify this since that eureka moment. 
Have we found said reasons? 

You'll have to come and see the show. 

How did you go about gathering the team for it?
We both live quite near each other and there's a good pub in between. We had worked together hither and thither previously and not fallen out to an irreparable extent.  Thus it seemed like a goer.


How did you become interested in making performance?
Did poorly at school, always quite liked showing off. You don't need A-Levels to go to Drama school. Boom. 

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?
 Largely yes.  We both work in slightly different ways though we both drink a lot of tea.   I think we have a lot of common ground but have taken a leap with this show.  Improvisation is a big part of both of our processes.  However, allowing that space for the unexpected on stage is something we've really run with this time.  Not trying to mitigate against the show going somewhere unexpected is something we were both keen to push.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?
Conflict. By that we mean a conflict of desires. The desire to stay and experience it and the desire to run away.


What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?
Bribery and inducements, psychological experiments, torture techniques (no really). 

n.b. not the really bad torture the key stage 1 kind of stuff. Sensory deprivation, confusion that sort of thing. 

Do you see your work within any particular tradition? 
Absolutely. Bouffon and the tradition of mockery. The role of the fool to make us question how we live our lives. 

Within that tradition we are looking for how we do that in today's world. 


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