THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST DRAGONS …
Alli Sebastian Wolf’s name alone is part fairytale character, part old-fashioned, pipe-toting parchment scribbler. Which is pretty appropriate for a CAL Premiers Fellowship writer who has to date dreamt up a zombie-noir radio play entitled The Hideous Demise of Detective Slate (which bagged the Sydney Airport Excellence in Theatre Award at the Sydney Fringe in 2011), an exhibition of drawings, dioramas and words at Mori Gallery complete with a look-in from Groucho Marx’s nipples … and now The Importance of Being Earnest Dragons, and Other Classic Tales, as Told by an Octopus which dives headfirst into a dense thicketty world of hip-hopping Grecian goddesses, glam rock, and … well, actually, we better let the lady explain it for herself.
Please explain how some earnest dragons and a narrating octopus come to meet … The usual way people met before internet dating: reading! When Mr. Octopus sits us down by the fire the dragon gentlemen crawl out of his books to dance, devour and do his bidding.
You say you revisit some of our favourite stories … which ones? And how did you know (…have you been spying)? This be a triptych mash up of the best tales of lust and violence: The Importance Of Being Earnest Dragons, Hip Hop Hippolytus And Dante’s’ Glam Rock Inferno, all under one roof! I know … finally, right?!
This is somewhat a cast of thousands, with a five-piece band and nine performers cramming into the tiny Old Fitz theatre space … I don’t think the Fitz has ever had a show this big. We had to stack them like Lego to make everyone fit.
Your work is quite fantastical. How do you keep your writing and characters grounded and relatable? The characters spring from the fantastical depth of my skull – where genres are feasted on and archetypes are gagged and taped-up in the trunk. But for them – the demons, detectives and merpeople – for them this is real. We connect to them because their struggles for love and pride and rock hell supremacy are struggles we’re all going through.
Major influences? I soak up everything I can – this play has been a fantastic excuse to indulge in hair metal, twisted musicals, hip hop videos, lycra lovin’, sea life, dandy dressing, bling and big hair, Kevin Smith, Kixs, kickin’ choreography, cartoons, Barry White, and, of course, classic literature.
Do you think there is a bit of a zeitgeist of young Sydney playwrights doing really original things going on? And if so how would you characterise it? As awesome. The world is too full and strange and wonderful not to bring as much of that into our stories as possible. I haven’t seen that sort of freshly absurd junkyard playfulness happening outside of young Syd/Melb/Canberra theatre, but it very well could be. Junkyard revolution, baby.
What’s one image you hope people will take away with them from Dragons? Here’s this one bit where the blinged-out Artemis and Aphrodite are trying to make up over a pile of dead mortal royalty while a dragon sneakily eats the corpses. That’s pretty bad-ass. Also we have an octopus in a smoking jacket – ladies …
Feb 28-Mar 24, Old Fitzroy Theatre, cnr Cathedral & Dowling Sts, Woolloomooloo, $21-33, 1300 241 167, rocksurfers.org
