JERICHO was a one-woman show devised in response to the political climate of 2016. It was about journalism, wrestling, and treating entertainment like it’s politics and vice versa. The process was an evenings-and-weekends mindfuck where we blundered from wrestling documentaries to books by Ali Smith, to political articles, to articles written in response to the political articles, to articles written in response to the responses, to the comment sections below where people were losing their shit. Digesting 2016 gave us heartburn, but it felt good to try. We were, at the time, still navigating the New World Order for ourselves, so JERICHO was an opportunity to emanate our struggle the only way we know how: via a messy, nerdy, trashy piece of theatre.
Also featured here are a variety of coping mechanisms adopted by the cast and production team to deal with the stresses of the Edinburgh Fringe in August, where we brought LOVE+ (another devised show) and BlackCatish-Musketeer (written by Dylan Coburn Gray) our tidy package of tech-minded romcoms. Both of these shows engage with how doubt or the unknown develop when humankind steamrolls into a landscape that’s exciting but unchartered, i.e. robot sex and Tinder respectively. These were the first two shows we made together, and it was from them we discerned our collective desire to make work that in some way takes an idea and coerces it to brazenly hold the gaze of the future.
Edinburgh itself was an accurate manifestation of similar themes of uncertainty vs thrill, and they had to be dealt with accordingly there. We all had our own ways of managing; as you can see, actor pal Cate Russell went to Arthur’s Seat to ward off any lurking homesickness or general evil spirits by channeling (with, it’s worth noting, suspicious ease) her inner Cathleen ni Houlihan. Aoife Spratt, another MALAPROP actor pal, tried in vain to break a window to escape her bedroom or whatever the hell is going on there. Thankfully, we employed a simple trick frequently used to soothe volatile actors, and I think the results speak for themselves (see helium balloon + cake + merry laugh).
I really enjoy that the collection of photos relating to our 2017 Fringe show, Everything Not Saved, are as madcap in their disjointedness as the images in the play were. This was a show comprised of three isolated short stories, each dealing in some way (or many ways) with the theme of memory. We see Breffni Holahan in a crepe wool beard and moustache, this time gazing longingly out of frame at what I remember to be an Aldi microwave sweet and sour chicken meal. This is her dutiful portrayal of Grigori Rasputin, naturally, and one of my fave photos ever. There’s actor Peter Corboy eating a flower, possibly an abstract representation of an inner childhood trauma a character of his still deals with, but more likely that photo is the illegitimate lovechild of panic and a rapidly approaching marketing deadline, and when I say ‘more likely’ here I mean ‘definitely without question’.
We also see the stunning, moody, pink plastic-sheathed form of Maeve O’Mahony in an abandoned attic. This image might be deemed the most controversial MALAPROP photo to date; obviously not because you can see Maeve’s hoof or honkers, but because the Fringe office were eager to go with this for the Everything Not Saved programme image, the first of their advice we ever vetoed as we worried it looked like Maeve had been kicked from a car on a motorway and was trying to find her clothes and way home. We eventually settled on a picture of her looking more like Patrick Star from Spongebob, which thankfully was a better tonal reflection of the show
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