Episode 1 :: Sh!t Theatre

FK Alexander and I met in 2018 to discuss her recent show VIOLENCE and (I Could Go on Singing) Over the Rainbow, a 2016 Edinburgh Festival Fringe breakout hit. FK is a Glasgow-based live artist whose shows are often durational, ritualistic, and experiential for audiences, foregrounding violent actions and noise but rooted in tender intimacy. Confronting big and often difficult feelings, not least loneliness, their effects are destructive but also restorative. They are consistently fascinated with pop cultural fantasy figures, such as ‘girl next door’ Judy Garland, and Queen of Hearts, Princess Diana. We discuss FK’s devising practices, motivations, and obsessions, and how order and sobriety in day-to-day life allow her to dig deep into violence in performance.

Krishna Istha and I discuss their stand-up comedy show about trans experience, Beast, directed by Zoë Coombs Marr. Krishna is a London-based performer, writer, live artist, and theatre maker whose work explores gender politics and queer culture. They created performance persona Bambi Sexsmith during Duckie’s Homosexualist Summer School, trained with GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN and comedian Hannah Gadsby, and performed in Rosana Cade’s Walking:Holding, Laura Bridgeman’s The Butch Monologues, and Wild Bore by Zoë Coombs Marr, Ursula Martinez, and Adrienne Truscott. Krishna and I discuss Beast’s infusion of comedy with live art; its costuming, audiences, scenography, and making process; and topics from racism to QTIPOC cabaret, mentoring, visibility, and touring while trans.

Breach Theatre co-directors Ellice Stevens and Billy Barrett met me to discuss It’s True, It’s True, It’s True. The show restages the seventeenth-century trial of artist Agostino Tassi for the rape of teenage Artemesia Gentileschi, who would become one of the most famous painters of her era. Combining courtroom drama, stagings of some of Gentileschi’s most famous – and feminist – paintings, punk music, and a powerful three-woman ensemble, It’s True, It’s True, It’s True confronts sexual, social, and institutional violence against women. Billy, Ellice, and I talk ‘post-verbatim’ theatre, devising, performing Artemesia, #MeToo, rage, care, design, structuring, and staging nakedness, sex, and violence. It’s True, It’s True, It’s True was an award-winning hit at the 2018 Edinburgh Fringe and London’s New Diorama Theatre and returns to Edinburgh as part of the British Council’s 2019 Showcase before a UK tour. https://www.facebook.com/breachtheatre/

Rosana Cade and Ivor MacAskill joined me in April 2019 to discuss their collaboratively devised show MOOT MOOT, which appears in the 2019 Showcases of Made in Scotland and the British Council at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In the absurd parallel universe of MOOT MOOT, Cade and MacAskill play doppelganger radio talk show hosts Barry and Barry, struggling to communicate meaningfully while nevertheless sustaining humour, playfulness, fondness, and the suggestions of queer love. We talk about what motivated the work, its relationship to an era of opinions, and its engagement with techniques of collaboration, physical theatre, costuming, improvisation, and characterization.

I met the Reverend Billy – also known as Bill Talen – at Artsadmin’s Toynbee Studios in east London near the end of his Trump Depression Hotline Tour across England in October 2017. Based in New York since the 1990s, the Reverend Billy and his secular-political Church of Stop Shopping use public preaching and singing to protest against rampant consumerism, corporate greed, ecological injustice, and Trump. Reverend Billy and I discussed what’s important in using the arts to change the world, including local activism, collaboration, music, and love. The Trump Depression Hotline Tour is directed by Savitri D; the musical director is Nehemiah Luckett. www.revbilly.com

Selina Thompson met me in Birmingham to discuss her show salt., which retraces the route of the Transatlantic slave triangle from the UK to Ghana, to Jamaica, and back. We explore why Selina felt compelled to make both that journey and this show about colonialism’s billowing, global impacts. We discuss the importance of dramaturgy, collaboration, music, and time for writing, and we hear a bit about her next project, featuring Missy Elliott. salt. is at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe from 5-26 August, 2017, and touring. It is directed by Dawn Walton; the producer is Emma Beverley; design by Katherina Radeva; sound design by Tanuja Amarasuriya. http://selinathompson.co.uk/

Iconic lesbian feminist performance company Split Britches’ Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver talk with Jen Harvie about the forty years they’ve worked with – and loved – each other. We discuss how they met, how they’ve sustained collaboration and communication, and how changes in cultural attitudes to sexuality and gender affect Retro(per)spective, the joyous cocktail of greatest-hits scenes from past work they are touring. We consider the importance of performing with love and care, and when to shout and when to whisper. https://splitbritches.wordpress.com/

Jen Harvie talks with performance maker and artist Scottee whose work consistently addresses the experiences of being an outsider – affected by class, race, and/or sexuality. We discuss his move from London to the Essex seaside, mental health, neurodiversity, hospitality, and class, and how all these things relate to his performance, especially Bravado, which is touring in 2017.

Jen Harvie talks with performance makers Nic Green and Rosana Cade about Cock and Bull, created with Laura Bradshaw for the eve of the 2015 UK General Election and touring in spring 2017 including to London’s Southbank, 25-30 April. We discuss how the show sampled rhetorical language and gestures from the 2014 Conservative Party Conference, then broke them down in a precisely scored and choreographed exorcism towards a hoped-for new future. We talk about politics, inequality, formalism, bodies, music, anger, people, work, task-based performance, and how to make performance without funding, and with passion.

Jen Harvie talks with performance maker Lucy McCormick about her show, Triple Threat – a pop-tune-powered, dirty-dancing, hour-long, queer, feminist takeover of the epic story of Jesus. We explore the aesthetics of geekiness, the body politics of queer clubs, sensuality in the New Testament, grief, belief, comedy, collaboration, and creative energy. Triple Threat is at London's Soho Theatre from 28 March to 22 April 2017.

Jen Harvie talks with Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole of Sh!t Theatre about what inspires them and how they devise performance. We hear about their current show, Letters to Windsor House, previous shows including Women’s Hour, and next show DollyWould, and cover topics from love to death, gentrification, friendship, money, and cardboard comets.