How about doing an honours thesis on audience reactions to your cabaret show? “It’s a study of the phenomenon of audiences in performances using story telling techniques in an intimate setting,” explains writer and performer Alex Roe. In the interests of academic research Roe is bringing his cabaret show Here Comes Your Man about a serial killer for hire to this year’s Melbourne Fringe. Sounds like he’s created himself a good time in disguise. But a show about a serial killer – how will that be fun for his audiences? “He’s not one of your drunken foul-mouthed troubadours of cabaret,” says Roe, of his character, Mr X. “I take a look inside the head of a serial killer to find the person in there.”
What leads a nice boy like Roe to delve into the mind of a murderer? “I’ve always had a soft spot for the lone warrior,” he explains. “I’ve always been interested in the eastern-western tropes surrounding him. You see him in comics, literature, film, animation, pop culture…the wandering warrior, the anti-hero who’s good at what he does, the fringe-dweller walking that line on the edge of the societal norm. To him the perfect kill means good quality work; he wants to be the best.” Roe has made his character if not sympathetic then at least acceptable by including the audience in his conceit. “He’s teaching,” explains Roe. “He comes on stage to deliver a corporate seminar to would-be assassins. He brings the audience on a par with himself, to the same level. He’s a sophisticated predator and that type of relationship can be intimidating to an audience so he speaks to them as though they’re all killers, as though he’s teaching the next generation of the killer elite.”
While we’re getting in touch with our inner Dexters, Roe is exploring what happens in the story of the anti-hero archetype when he finds he has a human side after all. “Something changes in him,” continues the performer. “The realisation of his humanity makes him vulnerable, it brings him down and he’s undone. The noir hero treads a similar path: after years and years of defying his humanity, cutting off all emotion, he finds it’s not what he wants any more. Here Comes Your Man’s not glorifying X’s life. He realises it’s a really bad thing to make your life a pursuit of something that goes against your real nature. There’s a heartbreaking moment when his facade of the predatory misanthrope starts to crack.”
Being everything at once Roe says, has been the greeted challenge in putting Here Comes Your Man together, given that he wrote and is performing the show himself. “I’ve initiated all parts of the process. It’s really complex stuff for a one-man 60 minute show. Being dynamic is the hardest part, adhering to character. There are moments when I am walking into the audience, talking to them, I’m ad-libbing a lot. It’s really interesting to hear how people respond.”
Roe has orchestrated Here Comes Your Man to include sophisticated theatrical elements in what he calls ‘a pseudo-realm of storytelling’ where all the performance devices including song create a ‘collagic effect’. “It’s not like an open-mike night,” he notes. “Cabaret doesn’t just rely on atmosphere or music or character. You can see the trailer on Vimeo. It’s stylised, a bit Sin City in effect, black and white with the flash of red coming out. All the songs are by other artists, but when you put them in this specific context they develop the story, they have something in common with the narrative.”
Roe is particularly concerned with how being close to a performer, as audiences often are in a cabaret setting, affects them. “The smaller space and intimate image is in service to the storyteller and vice versa. The exchange with the audience is more evident in that environment. You lose that when everything gets bigger, you’re missing that interaction with the audience.” Roe reckons the huge resurgence in cabaret is due to punters wanting this close connection with the performer, even if the performer’s persona is that of a perfectionist killer. There’s catharsis in having a performer manifest our collective dark sides all the while we are objectifying the artist. Tommy Bradson and Meow Meow are favourites of Roe’s, in the way they objectify audiences in turn. “Meow Meow is so confrontational,” he says with glee. “In cabaret the illusion of consent puts audiences on the back foot. That character can talk to you, touch you, scare you; cabaret relies on trust in a very intimate sense. But the story is in service to all the experiences and emotions of the audience. The audience becomes as much a part of the performance as the performer.”
BY LIZA DEZFOULO
Venue: The Tuxedo Cat, 17 Wills St, CBD
Dates: September 19 – October 3 (except Wednesdays)
Times: 8.15pm (Sundays 7.15pm)
Tickets: $14 – $18 from the Fringe.
