‘Elephents’ is the next original production to open at The Blue Room. It’s a surreal comedy daring to tackle the things that usually go politely ignored. It’s got acid rain, musical numbers, pachyderms and a team of seasoned performers. What more could you possibly want in a show?
We chatted to writer and performer Jeffrey Jay Fowler about the show that’s been described as “a surreal soap opera where people find the power to sing all the things they wish they could say.”
“It’s getting a lot more like a sitcom. A surreal sitcom with some really really urgent political undertones, but predominantly a very stupid comedy. “ he said.
Fowler explained that the current manifestation of the show has gone through quite the evolution. “We had a month long development at the end of last year, which created a two act, two and a half hour musical, and then we went a week before rehearsals, I was chatting to Gita Bezard, one of the other devisers and realised that I hated the play. Not hated, actually, that’s a terribly strong word. I realised that I wanted to do a lot more, not in terms of length but in terms of ambition. That meant shredding the play and getting rid of a huge amount of scenes and refining the characters and defining what it was that we had initially set out to do. Which was to look at why people are unable to talk about very obvious things or very problematic things in a comedic way and using songs. And so, in that kind of adventure to do that we’d been moving around the genres of sitcom and opera and almost cartoon. I know we’re not drawn, we are live actors but that idea keeps coming back to me like it’s so large, but it’s not quite farce or pantomime.”
Elephents is set in a place called Tuskville, where there’s an elephant hiding in every room. For the people of Tuskville, there is always an elephant in the room that they are too polite or afraid to mention. Fowler gave us an insight into what some of those theoretical pachyderms might be.
“In Elephents, the whole world is on fire. When you turn up at someone’s house it’s etiquette for you to be given a towel and an ice pack, just because it’s so hot outside but nobody ever talks about the fact that the world has gotten to this state. All umbrellas are made of lead because there’s constant acid rain and so there is a backdrop of a very environmentally troubled world and a very politically troubled world. There are riots going on that no one really cares about. And then on top of that we have an incredibly fun, light-hearted soap operatic/sitcom storyline, so we’re working with these two levels like that.”
Fowler is an experienced theatrical writer, having penned such critical successes as ‘History of Drinking’, ‘Minnie and Mona Play Dead’ and the recent Fringe World offering ‘Second Hands’. He told us why this time he wanted to take things in a more musical direction.
“I think I wanted to bite off more than I can chew. [Laughs] and I managed that wonderfully.
“I think as a teenager, before I became an actor, before I became a director I did have these kind of aspirations to- very naive teenage aspirations to rock stardom and I think on a level they probably still exist enough for me to be writing a musical now, for me to feel like music is something that I want to do. And in order to do that I’ve surrounded myself with very talented actual musicians, like Brett Smith and Pete Townsend, and Brent Hill, who’ve all helped in the creation of the music with me just having to plant the seed. I also think music is really entertaining, I think it has a great place in theatre and I think it can lift a play to the next level, make it really enjoyable and express mood and emotion in a way that straight theatre potentially can’t.
“There’s songs in Elephents I used to express what the people fail to say to one another, you know there’s like a break up scene, the guy leaves and the woman finds all the things that she actually wanted to say in the break up and expresses them through song. None of the songs are heard by the other characters, so if a character sings only the audience hear that. Yeah, so it’s kind of used as an insight as well. I felt like it really lined up with the form of the play. But like I said, it really is, it’s just that I wanted to make a musical. I wanted to see how far I could push my songwriting skills. And that has been an incredible challenge and is probably why I’m not sleeping. “
Fowler is not only the writer of the play but is also performing in the show as part of the seasoned ensemble including Peter Townsend and Gita Bezard. He told us what it’s like to take on both roles under the guidance of director Kathryn Osborne
“It’s really interesting, like I’ll listen to actors say their lines and Kat will be trying to direct and I’ll be like ‘wait, can we just adjust the line here?’ [Laughs] And Kat has already developed a very specific look that she has to shoot as me from across the room . Yeah it’s strange as well because I have to turn off the director part of my brain and just write and let Kat do her work.”
‘Elephents’ is the first production for the newly formed theatrical company, The Last Great Hunt, a group of artists including Fowler and Osborne who are focused on making innovative theatrical productions in Perth. Fowler was recently living in New York but returned to take on the role of Associate Director at the Black Swan Theatre Company. He explained what it was like to make the adjustment from New York back to Perth.
“There’s a massive reverse culture shock when you move back from New York to Perth. Actually unfortunately in the gay community in that side of my life I’ve found going from New York, where I had an awesome group of gay friends who were all in relationships (myself included), we would just go out to an absolutely huge amount of bars and it was very casual and comfortable and you consistently meet new and interesting people who are engaged with art and culture and theatre.
“Life coming back to where I spent my early twenties in Perth and having the one bar and one nightclub is a real challenge. I find the mindset here unfortunately difficult. You really need to log onto Grindr to see a massive amount of faceless profiles here which you actually don’t get in New York, everyone is very self-accepting, I find Perth hasn’t got there yet. The gay community, oh sorry it’s not the gay community- men who have sex with men are really far behind and I find that challenging. And you notice it when you date people here. They don’t want to hold hands in public or they’re not as comfortable with themselves. It’s a really bad basis for actually not just relationships but being a happy, well-rounded self realised person.”
Fowler says that although he’s having some difficulties readjusting, he believes in the future of Perth as a culturally vibrant city, especially as far as the arts are concerned.
“Yeah I mean Perth’s quite interesting in that I’ve lived in Sydney as well and they’re like ‘Oh great’ and begin talking about it. In Perth, almost consistently ‘What do you do?’ ‘I work in theatre’ ‘Sorry, what do you do for money?’ [Laughs], People don’t actually conceive of the arts as a full time pursuit and I do think that’s changing. I think there’s wonderful work being done, not just by The Blue Room, I think Black Swan are doing a wonderful job increasing their subscriber base. Artrage are doing a wonderful job with the Fringe. You know it is changing and I think there are a lot of really wonderful independent companies that are improving consistently and developing new audiences. So you know, things are getting better.”
You can catch ‘Elephents’ at The Blue Room from the 29th of April to the 18th of May.
Book tickets here.
Sophie Joske
