Intimate Apparel & Mademoiselle: working with Michael Dalley
I think it was 2007 when someone I had been acquainted with at uni (but whom I had not thought about for years, let alone seen) Michael Dalley, rang me to ask if I'd like to work on a new cabaret show he was writing. This was new territory for me: Michael was developing the show, but he wasn't sure what it was yet, and wondered if I'd like to be a part of the process. I knew Michael had fashioned a career for himself as a comic/cabaret performer in the Noel Coward style, but had never seen any of his shows.
I agreed, and the result became the first developmental season of Intimate Apparel, a show that is essentially about the relationship between performers and their audience. We wanted to explore the notion that, somehow, performers, through their commitment to the abstractions of 'process', had lost the ability - the desire - to be intimate with an audience, and to simply entertain.
The show was great fun. It ended up being a cabaret satirising performance styles, from burlesque to Asian-influenced theatre to stand-up, concluding with a song about a 'shit Australian musical' being the way to solve the problem the performers were facing. It remains a show with a long life.
I agreed, and the result became the first developmental season of Intimate Apparel, a show that is essentially about the relationship between performers and their audience. We wanted to explore the notion that, somehow, performers, through their commitment to the abstractions of 'process', had lost the ability - the desire - to be intimate with an audience, and to simply entertain.
The show was great fun. It ended up being a cabaret satirising performance styles, from burlesque to Asian-influenced theatre to stand-up, concluding with a song about a 'shit Australian musical' being the way to solve the problem the performers were facing. It remains a show with a long life.
On the back of Intimate Apparel (but 2 shows later for Michael), we came together again to develop and perform Mademoiselle. This work, which debuted in 2012, was loosely inspired by Jean Genet's play The Maids, and featured us as two servants trapped in an imbalanced power relationship with their employer, a sizeable socialite who is never seen, and with each other.
Their bitchiness strips the dignity from everything: other people's dining habits, language (the c-word!), debutantes and shop assistants trying to improve their stations in life, passive-aggressive foreigners... all come in for a shellacking. Eventually the pair turn on each other in a sad, existential moment of vulnerability... but only momentarily.
After an initial season at the marvellous 45 Downstairs in flinders Lane in Melbourne, Michael has concerned himself with other ventures, but we intend to develop the show further, identifying targets more specifically, honing the satire. Mademoiselle will see another season in the near future.
Their bitchiness strips the dignity from everything: other people's dining habits, language (the c-word!), debutantes and shop assistants trying to improve their stations in life, passive-aggressive foreigners... all come in for a shellacking. Eventually the pair turn on each other in a sad, existential moment of vulnerability... but only momentarily.
After an initial season at the marvellous 45 Downstairs in flinders Lane in Melbourne, Michael has concerned himself with other ventures, but we intend to develop the show further, identifying targets more specifically, honing the satire. Mademoiselle will see another season in the near future.
