ED2013 Interviews ED2013 Musicals ED2013 Week2 Edition

Hungry Bitches: Hipsters beware

By | Published on Tuesday 13 August 2013

Facehunters

The Hungry Bitches are back at theSpace @ Symposium Hall with a show first performed at the Fringe last year, and further developed over the last twelve months, with the latest version getting a neat 5/5 from the ThreeWeeks review team.
A brand new musical inspired by Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Picture Of Dorian Gray’ and exploring a hipster scene obsessed with appearance, ‘Facehunters’ boasts “catchy songs and aggressive choreography” while “brilliantly ridiculing the hipster scene”.
We spoke to the core creative team of director Matthew Reynolds, writer/composer Graham Mercer, choreographer Megan Griffith and producer Sarah Hyman to find out more about The Hungry Bitches and their hipster ridiculing musical extravaganza.

CC: Let’s start at the start, how did you guys come to form Hungry Bitches Productions?
Sarah: The Hungry Bitches started off in 2008 as a riot girl punk band, born in the hot pink arty depths of Graham’s bedroom. Matthew and Graham began fantasising about the performance spectacle of their first live gig, yet never actually made it out of that hot pink room; deciding, instead, that they were more like wanna-be rockstar thespians than an actual riot girl punk band. And that’s when the rest of us got involved. And so, in our first year at university in Leeds, we formed the company and began making musical theatre together.

CC: Where did the idea for ‘Facehunters’ come from?
Matthew: The idea began with us being a little bit obsessed with hipsters, and following the hipster scene online. Our personal experiences of hipster culture, as wannabes trying to be as cool as them, failed miserably. And quickly taught us that the hipster is actually the product of a lost generation, they stand for nothing and the only thing that unites them is an obsession with appearance. This vanity-driven identity struggle forms a great social backdrop to complement our love for Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Picture Of Dorian Gray’. Like the hipster, and Gray, the Hungry Bitches loathe the idea of growing old and tired.

CC: How much of ‘Dorian Gray’ is in the musical?
Matthew: The novel was largely just the central motif, which could be married so well with the east London hipster scene, running with the Faustian pact idea and keeping it in tandem with the hipster obsession of image and vanity.
Graham: Though upon reading the novel again, and after developing ‘Facehunters’ over the past couple of years, there are other similarities between the two, though nothing entirely deliberate. Wilde’s novel is a chilling gothic horror, ours a fantastical, almost sci-fi, coming of age satire, with characters you hopefully recognise and connect with.

CC: The story, songs and choreography all stand out – is collaboration between the core creative team important when creating a show of this type?
Sarah: I think our strength is in our ability, as a creative team, to collaborate. We all share the same beliefs and vision of what we think theatre should be, after all, we were born in the Avant-garden. The choreography, for example, is created through close collaboration between Matthew and Megan. Matthew is a total ‘two left feet’ non-dancer and Megan is fully trained, but they plan the shape of the dances together to match the tone of Graham’s songs, and then Megan creates the actual routines. Matthew then deconstructs the routines in workshops, which focus on putting the story and the feeling of the movement before the actual dance.

CC: You also performed ‘Facehunters’ at last year’s Festival, has it progressed or developed in the intervening year?
Graham: Yes. ‘Facehunters’ has undergone two rewrites since last year’s Festival. Although the basis of it has not changed, many of the threads have now evolved. Story, concept and characters are now all much more concentrated, clearer and cohesive.

CC: There seem to be a lot less new musicals than new plays – certainly at the Fringe, but also in general – why do you think that is?
Graham: Firstly, it is much easier to write a new play than a new musical. There are so many layers to writing a new musical show, and then even more complexities to putting it on its feet.
Sarah: In terms of doing a new musical at the Fringe, it’s not something that comes cheap, as it involves more people and is much more costly with aspects such as sound to think about. We have a cast and crew of 23 people, that as a factor alone is definitely restricting.
Megan: However, we are lucky enough to have such a fantastic cast and crew who all fund themselves with no one being paid. Hungry Bitches Productions receives no funding and works on an entirely recycled budget.

CC: With the West End seemingly filled with so called ‘jukebox musicals’, is it harder to get brand new musical shows off the ground? Do you think that’s a problem?
Matthew: Yes, the West End is full of many jukebox musicals. But those musicals largely play on nostalgia, where as we feel there is a gap in the market for something which is current and created for a contemporary audience. Like the success of the musicals ‘Hair’ and ‘Rent’ in their respective eras, ‘Facehunters’ is a musical that speaks for its generation.

CC: The musicals strand is one of the smaller at the Fringe, but do you find the Edinburgh Festival audience is nevertheless really up for some good musical theatre?
Matthew: Most definitely. We believe that ‘Facehunters’ is a musical for people who don’t like musicals, as well as those that do! The Fringe is all about emerging new work and we’ve found that most people here are willing to embrace our take on musical theatre. People come here for a good time and musicals give people that.
Megan: We’ve had people come back a few times, who are learning the words to the songs and feel like they are part of the ‘Face Club’ we take them too.

CC: I think you have another show in development? Tell us about that.
Sarah: It’s called ‘Americana’ – it follows a high school delinquent stoner and an all-American football stud, who fall for each other and decide to run for prom king and king, and their struggle with their bigoted fellow pupils and teachers. It’s starting to sound incredible, and is our best work to date.
Matthew: It will be our first piece with a strong and steadfast political message – oppression will be met with rebellion, and if you try to keep us down, we will fight you head on – however, in a country where guns are all too easy to get hold of, how far will our teenage rebels go for their cause, and for revenge? Rehearsals start in September, and we will be bringing it to the Fringe next year.

CC: And what are your future plans for ‘Facehunters’?
Graham: ‘Facehunters’ will always be an ongoing project for The Hungry Bitches. It’s been directed, choreographed and written for the cast that we have, and is now a part of our lives. As a project we will continue to push it and redevelop it with our cast. London is the next stop for the show, the only thing stopping us at the moment is a lack of funding.

‘Facehunters’ was performed at theSpace @ Symposium Hall at Edinburgh Festival 2013.



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