Katie Pritchard is Sir Elton Scone<\/p>\n
In the Covid lockdowns, I was drawing all these silly things, and one day I drew Elton John as a scone. It brought me lots of joy. I love Elton John and everything he\u2019s about \u2013 his music and his outfits \u2013 and my first job as a musician was in a bar in Soho, where I used to play his back catalogue. I turned the drawing into a very silly character, just for my enjoyment.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t think anything of it until last year, when I was talking to my friend, the amazing drag artist Michael Twaits, and mentioned Sir Elton Scone. He was, like, \u201cyou need to develop that.\u201d The character has evolved, but he\u2019s still true to his roots in that it\u2019s basically a bit like Elton John \u2013 but obviously for legal reasons, nothing like Elton John \u2013 and he just loves to bake. He\u2019s hosting a TV baking gameshow that uses no ovens, so it\u2019s completely nonsensical. It\u2019s become really fun because audiences understand how a TV studio audience reacts, so it\u2019s a clear game for them to play.<\/p>\n
I thought if I was coming at it as drag, what would I perceive to be very \u201cmasculine\u201d traits to put into the character? For me, it was manspreading and making people move out the way for me. I realised when I\u2019m backstage I\u2019m constantly trying to not be in the way, and I\u2019m only 5ft tall, so I thought, let\u2019s play with the opposite of that. If I am taking up this much space, what comes with that is more confidence, so I made this giant character \u2013 giant hands, a big chef\u2019s hat, the suit jacket twice the width of my shoulders. Although if I could go back to last March, when I bought some velvet curtains from a charity shop in Wales to make the suit, I wish I could tell myself: in the run-up to Edinburgh, you\u2019re going to have to preview this show in 30C heat.<\/p>\n
Previous characters I\u2019ve done include someone who sang hip-hopera \u2013 hip-hop songs, opera style \u2013 but I found it very restrictive. I feel like a baking-themed Elton John is more free. That\u2019s been a really joyful part of it as well. It has sparked so many ideas.<\/p>\n
Sam Eley is Basil CrumbwickBighead strikes again \u2026 Sam Eley as Basil Crumbwick. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
I started doing standup 10 years ago, and got a bit sick of writing normal jokes. The standups I liked were absurd and surreal. I started a Twitter account called Basil Crumbwick with no intention or really knowing what I was doing, and I would tweet out weird nonsensical things, a kind of free-writing exercise. It turned into this character of this horrible old man. If anyone tried to follow it, I blocked them. It was very much for me and just this experiment I was doing for my own amusement.<\/p>\n
He had to be the most weird, confused, un-self-aware person imaginable, and I think an older British man is a good way of getting to that. He exists in a very small world, but it\u2019s all filtered through a lot of absurdity and surrealism. Whether that\u2019s his delusion or whether he just actually exists in this insane, cartoon world is for the audience to decide.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m 7ft tall with Crumbwick\u2019s head on. Because I\u2019m not an actor, and the character was built through this anonymous Twitter account, it felt right to have the anonymity of a big papier-mache head. I knew people would say, \u201cAre you doing Frank Sidebottom?\u201d I think Frank Sidebottom\u2019s great, but I wouldn\u2019t say this was inspired by him and I\u2019m doing quite a different thing.<\/p>\n
This is now the third head I\u2019ve made. It\u2019s really hot and because I can\u2019t see very well, I\u2019m constantly bumping into things, banging my head or falling over. He\u2019s such an angry character that when I, as a performer, am suffering, it ends up fitting him quite well.<\/p>\n
Basil says horrible things. I\u2019ve written routines where he says xenophobic, sexist and homophobic things, and I don\u2019t want to shy away from that and what people like him are like, but there\u2019s a satirical side to the show.You can let the audience figure out what your angle is, and different people can interpret it in different ways. I think that gives you more creative freedom. But it can be tricky being a performer who wants to be liked, playing the least likable man in the world.<\/p>\n
Hudson Hughes is Rev Derek GrittHot under the collar \u2026 Hudson Hughes as Rev Derek Gritt. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
I started with the idea of this horror story, based on Viy, a Ukrainian film \u2013 and the first officially sanctioned horror film in the Soviet Union \u2013 about a monk who kills a witch. She comes back to life three nights in a row, and he\u2019s got to preside over the last rites. I don\u2019t know why, but when I watched that, I thought: I could do that, but as a comedy.<\/p>\n
I initially wrote pages of ideas, and then I got a bit stuck. I just couldn\u2019t figure out what the character would be, so I shelved it for about a year. Then I must have been watching something with TV presenters Richard Madeley, Alan Titchmarsh or Anton Du Beke, and I thought, this is who he is. I find something funny about them \u2013 they\u2019re middle-aged men who wear foundation.<\/p>\n
So Derek is a vicar, but he\u2019s also a TV celebrity. The audience are his old parish that he hasn\u2019t been back to for 20 years. He treats them terribly, like they\u2019re country bumpkins, practically medieval, and he can be extremely condescending to them. There\u2019s a veneer of charm that I think is quite funny, and I think he does genuinely try to be friendly, but he\u2019s also quite sneering.<\/p>\n
There are a lot of electronic props in the show, including an animatronic coffin which is controlled remotely \u2013 I studied electrical engineering at university \u2013 mainly to advance the horror rather than the comedy.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not really interested in being myself on stage. I\u2019ve done standup a couple of times and I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve got anything interesting to say. It\u2019s so much easier to put words into someone else\u2019s mouth and figure out who the character is. When you\u2019re playing a character, you can be a lot less self-aware. I like high drama, and being theatrical. I find character comedy more surprising as well. I know a lot of clowns, and I definitely draw stuff from that. In standup, unless you\u2019re doing audience interaction, most of the time you\u2019re talking about stuff happening elsewhere and getting the audience to imagine it, whereas with clowning, and with character comedy, it\u2019s all about what\u2019s happening in the room.<\/p>\n
Anna Leong Brophy is Born Sexy YesterdayOut of this world \u2026 Anna Leong Brophy in Born Sexy Yesterday. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
The seed of the show came from a podcast I used to do with my comedy partner, Emily Lloyd-Saini, where we reviewed the Luc Besson film The Fifth Element, and the concept of Born Sexy Yesterday came up. It was first identified by writer Jonathan McIntosh. He noticed this theme, particularly in sci-fi, of a powerful alien or otherworldly entity who is deposited into the body of, usually, a 19-year-old model who has a lot of attributes that men value \u2013 martial arts or gun-fighting skills \u2013 but is completely naive to the human world. Which means as soon as she meets any man, often an extremely mediocre man, she thinks he is the most wise, amazing person ever, just because he\u2019s shown her what pizza is.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s unaware of her physical beauty, so she might accidentally take her top off, because what\u2019s the big deal? It\u2019s this worrying concept that men are so desperate to feel unthreatened that they actually want the mind of a baby in the body of a sexually active woman, whereas no woman would fantasise about having a baby deposited into a man\u2019s body. She lives in the same world as the manic pixie dream girl, and the girl next door, and all these tropes. I started seeing her everywhere, and I also realised that I had really bought into this idea of a woman having to be profoundly naive, but also incredibly strong and kick ass.<\/p>\n
I went with what immediately occurred to me as a \u201csexy alien\u201d. Initially, she was blue, but after several shows of painting myself and the resulting skin problems, she\u2019s no longer blue. But she has that smooth alien otherness while still being very human that I associate with characters like Leeloo in the Fifth Element \u2013 the sci-fi hottie.<\/p>\n
I have an acting background and I\u2019m always drawn to performing rather than telling. The show is essentially about inequalities that I see or experience day to day, but no one wants to sit in the dark for an hour to be ranted at. You can push it really far by parodying, for example, the tropes. It feels like these stories we\u2019re all told, men included. We\u2019ve all bought into them because that\u2019s the water we\u2019ve been swimming in. But it\u2019s interesting to lift the lid, and it feels like the audience all does that at the same time.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve played fantasy characters in TV and film \u2013 as a mixed-race person who is often viewed as \u201cother\u201d, it\u2019s a natural casting place where people want to put me. This show gives me the opportunity to play multiple characters, including all the characters I don\u2019t get cast as. I can play a man, I can play Leonardo DiCaprio. I get to make this show, play the roles and flex the muscles that I never get to flex. The joy of self-creation.<\/p>\n
Katie Pritchard is Sir Elton Scone<\/a> is at Hoots @ Nicolson Square until 30 August. Sam Eley is Basil Crumbwick: Soul Sewage<\/a> is at Monkey Barrel Comedy until 30 August. Hudson Hughes: At Your Service<\/a> is at Underbelly, Cowgate, until 30 August. Anna Leong Brophy: Born Sexy Yesterday<\/a> is at Pleasance Courtyard until 30 August.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Katie Pritchard is Sir Elton Scone In the Covid lockdowns, I was drawing all these silly things, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-599226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}