Sydney

What is the value of entertainment?
This week i had two conversations about the show, where audience members had really engaged with the underlying structures at play. My apologies but this blog will be even a little more self-serving than usual, as i want to quickly run through some of the things that they brought up - mainly because it makes me incredibly happy that people are able to see through some of the more sensationalist aspects of the performance, and observe that there are deeper ideas present. If any one would like to leave a comment about their own experience of Good Clean Fun I'd be ecstatic.

But don't worry, there will be shock, gore and adventure stories further down.

For me the purpose of entertainment, and as such the purpose which i see in this show, is a response that has been formed in reflection of what i have observed about mainstream society and the entertainment industry in general. I have worked now for a few years in circuses, theatres, sideshows, cinemas, on the street, in warehouses or tents or institutions, at festivals, cabarets and fringes. I have also been beaten by the cops at demonstrations, bullied by the criminal justice system, seen the circle of burning eyes at a rally of 1000's of Indian taxi drivers as they watched and took turns at addressing each other and the world, I have deliberately slowed (and been trodden on) by police horses while dressed as a zombie carrying a box of plague and building acrobatic structures before the horse lines, then cheered as people broke through a fence to occupy the coal train lines. I have heard speeches of passion, and speeches of cliche, and sat through hours of political meetings. I have seen some of the most beautiful, honest performances, and also some of the most misguided. In short, the melting points between public space and performance form a significant part of my dreams and desires.

On the other hand, commercial forms of entertainment can embody to me much of what is corrupt in our society. Situated before a passive audience, a show can just as easily reinforce dominant concepts of power and passivity in those who watch. So therefore the challenge and purpose of entertainment is to find ways of empowering the audience. If a theatre is like a closed circuit, then it also becomes a zone of experimentation, where controlled environments can produce surprising results. Good Clean Fun is intended to produce a number of these experiments, but it is a challenging process to monitor the results. Either that or they're not working.

One of the most crucial ideas that i see in the show is the lack of a passive space for the audience to occupy - we deliberately leave the space without seats, even if it means removing them like we have in our recent Sydney season. However on a certain type of night, people will without fail simply sit on the floor. This is probably related to the nature of our audience/community, who will happily sit where they please, but it also to me speaks of an expectation that entertainment is something that happens in front of you, for you, but not to you or by you. This is an expectation that we seek to change.

If an audience can engage in a performance, particularly a circus performance, with their body and their physical sense of  risk, aversion and pleasure, they are closer to the real world than in a show where they are seated, in the dark and able to remove themselves from an experience. And if in this first context you can create an experience which empowers the audience, allowing them to make choices, bond with each other, and become part of the performance, then you are creating a version of a power dynamic which is fundamentally different to the one that exists in external society. The idea is then that the audience are able to take this experience away with them, and hopefully hold onto it as an example of how the world could be.

The process of putting an ideas into a performance (or critically examining them) can often be confused with the set up of the theatrical experiment itself. As Wazzadeeno pointed out tonight, once you are in an environment/show/character, any material or lines or ideas neccessarily comes from within the boundaries of that experiement. It's easy to retrospectively feel as though you have written ideas into a show, when actually you have created those ideas through performing it.

One idea that i think we wrote into the show (but i'm not quite sure about), is the way that the individual segments of the show, deliberately don't relate to each other in any logical/narrative way. In my mind this is both convenient and a mocking gesture towards the nature of mainstream entertainment, which is consciously lacking a broader purpose. In this way Good Clean Fun reflects entertainment back on itself, presenting an absurdly hybrid mix of forms and styles that draw on cultural tropes like daytime television, obsession with celebrity, the surrealism of sideshow, the apathy of circus, and the invincibility of performers. Of course i may have just imagined all that.

In any case, i would love to hear people's reflections on this, whether they relate to the show or the ideas under discussion. However posts that reveal too much about the show may be politely refused - after all, we can't give away too many of our tricks...

...

To Sydney, and Good Clean Fun!

Good Clean Fun!

I have utterly fallen for this town. It's always nice to be somewhere new when there's a festival on, but I have to give massive respect and love to the people of the underground warehouse scene here, who have taken us into their homes, hearts, parties, and performances. Fuck yeah these people are Sweet! Shoutouts and thankyou's to everyone at the Hutch, the Barn, Dirty Shirlo's, the incredibly tolerant women of the Red Rattler, Tom from Deaf Hedge, and all the other new friends that we've made.

And fuck yeah the Dumpsters here are awesome!

Epic!

However there has also been some truly Doom moments, including Blue breaking her toe during a show, Simone fucking O'Brien smashing a cake into my face, then fondling it into my genitals and subsequently destroying the Red Rattler's carpet, Arm wrestling bogans at a filthy warehouse party (and winning!), Sydney Fringe not having set aside any lights for us to focus, running 45 minutes over time in our first show - all the way through the Bump In/Out for and the start of the next show, and of course training Blue to fill in for Cat Scobie (who is in Maitland looking after her mum) in just under three days.

This woman is amazing...

And we broke her :(

The show was reviewed by Guy Hobbs at Unfringed, the Sydney Fringe blog, here: http://unfringed.theaureview.com/2010/09/23/definitely-not-clean-but-still-fun/

He writes that "The beauty of Good Clean Fun is that it is a wildly punk variety show....Funny, irreverent and vaguely unhygienic",and several other excellent things - check it out!

And then there was the Boho Ball. Bloody hell, what an incredible crowd, night, cast and crew! See the photos for yourself on the Boho Ball facebook - props to Luke, Darius and Aiko. There's certainly plenty of Wazza's arse in there, and also this gem as he and I went to crowdsurf to the Baron's..

Hands Up!

They've also just released episode three of their ongoing series about the Ball, in which we introduce the Barons of Tang's dumpster cooking show.

So - an interesting week on many fronts. And tomorrow we head to Newcastle, where This Is Not Art are putting on a second birthday party for us on Thursday night - how nice of them ;)!

So i'm sure that we'll see many of you there, and those that we won't i hope to catch you either in melbourne or further down the road.

Thanks for listening,

Mad Love,

Mitch, Ruin, Pansy, Wazza, Svetlana, Maria, Bee, Amy, Blue, Little Miss Rampage and all the Caravan of Dooomers that live on inside each and every one of you... hehehe