“The Veils’ music is generally that nice, indie kind of sound,” Stekly tells me “but there’s this one song – Jesus For The Jugular – that’s completely not what they normally do. I just started imagining these old-world burlesque women. I thought, ‘wow, it would be so good to stage that scene.'”
Give any bloke on the street an MP3 player and he’s likely to start envisioning music videos, by Stekly’s gumption and commitment to the authenticity of Death To Carnivale! has had the cosmos responding ‘yes, please’ – in her favour.
“It was just a matter of delving into my many personal interests, like history and old spaghetti westerns and ’80s action movies and B-grade horror movies. I really liked the idea of a carnival and a show man, and P.T. Barnum being notorious for selling ideas to his audience and not really caring that he did, as long as people enjoyed their experience,” she reflects. “Then there was this short story that a friend wrote while bored at work about a death-defying clown from Bulgaria called Bongo. Just, one of those, oh you know, I’m-really-bored emails, and in just 300 words he had created this whole world. So I had my show man, I had my clown. I thought, that’s it… I think I know what I’m doing!”
Stekly says that she’d always envisioned Death To Carnivale! as a musical, and after the script’s completion, she was able to enlist the help of composer/music director Daniel Muscat from a chance connection on networking website Melband.
“By heart, I’m a metal-head, so I looked at what I had and thought, ‘This is edgy, I can’t do it half way.’ The music was my biggest challenge from the start, and it turned out not to be a challenge at all. I was really lucky to find my composer, who’s also our music director. Not only was he more than capable of taking on the project, but on a personal level absolutely he was fantastic to work with and was interested in the same things that I was. I just posted an ad on Melband and he responded. Extremely lucky.”
Though Stekly is the first to admit it hasn’t always been smooth sailing in terms of cast.
“It’s been an ongoing process in developing this. The cast we have now reflects the changes we went through in terms of the uncertainty about dates, venue, trying to bring all this together with a kind of DIY attitude. You know, volunteer, completely self-funded… It’s really challenging in that sense – but you attract certain people who like the idea of being a part of it, and like any relationship, your production will have those who grow with it and those who don’t.”
One such fortunate actor to have grown with Death to Carnivale! is Michael Mengarda, a self-taugh talent who plays the leading role of Barnaby.
“Barnaby runs the show,” Mengarda tells me. “He’s the protagonist and the antagonist all-in-one and he’s trying to stay ahead, trying to escape his fate because he basically made a deal with the devil and he wants to try his best to avoid it.” On how he became involved with the production: “I’d gone to university with a few of the guys who were involved and I got an email out of nowhere saying they were looking for a few actors, and I said, ‘Yeah, why not?’ It’s been kind of fun, because I was originally cast as another character, and as things worked out I ended up being given the role of Barnaby.”
“I’ve always been quite relaxed about how the whole show has evolved,” Stekly explains. “It’s always been about getting the right dynamics, the right people, the right bond for the show. There are a lot of good people out there, but the cast we have, we’re so close now. We’ve been quite lucky.”
Hold it – before you break into that rendition of kumbaya, just recall the mild anxiety the word ‘carnie’ makes you feel and you’re nowhere near calling it a night.
“Death To Carnivale! will be gory,” Stekly warns. “There will be blood…”
