Privilege: The Musical! writer, director and performer Louise White, along with co-creator and fellow performer Venus Patel introduce their new show, described as 'a glittering, soul searching look at power and inequality', ahead of its World Premiere this March in Bray's Mermaid Theatre.
Venus: I've been thinking about this process of making Privilege: The Musical! How do you feel the deconstruction of a musical plays into the issues that you’re speaking about?
Louise: For me, I was thinking a lot about the fact that I’m working with performers who have different experiences of privilege to me, so I felt that, in asking people to come into a room to explore this topic, it didn’t make sense for me to be the voice that tells this story. It’s about other people’s experiences and other people’s lives. I realised that we have to make a show about 'making a show’ so that we can frame the performers’ stories in a way that is true to them. We can show all of the stepping stones – the parts where it’s challenging and the parts where it’s fun. How are you finding it?
Venus: I agree, I think it gives it a nuance that allows people, well even, allows me to speak from my own perspective, rather than focusing on you, the director. It opens it up for the audience to see our individual thought processes.
Louise: And there are areas where I’ve been called out about something, and we’ve put those in the show. That doesn’t have to be explosive, we’ve been making it comedic, or heartfelt, any number of things.
Venus: And so they’re actually dealt with.
Louise: Yes, exactly. Instead of me being the boss of the room and nobody ever questioning me - which is in some ways unavoidable - we’re trying to expose the power a director has and have fun with that.
You’re a performance artist and you put a lot of your work out of social media. How do you find the experience of being in the room for musical theatre rehearsals?
Venus: Performance has always been – even when I was younger - a part of me – it’s always come through, even in social media or things that I do. I feel the experience of coming into a room like this is more inviting and exciting, that we’re actually working on these songs daily, and we’re building up to something day by day. You can actually see it progressing. That’s new to me and I love it.
Because the show has been delayed, do you think that it has evolved or how has that affected the work?
Louise: Yes, I do, I think quite a lot actually. We went into our first development week in February 2020 with a different cast, just before the pandemic. I initially thought that the show was going to be in some ways confrontational, like an explosive riot of ideas. But there has been a lot of fragility and reckoning in the past two years, we’ve seen social divides on such a huge level. We need to have better deeper understandings of each other. So, for me, I want to make something that explores the complexity of privilege in everyday scenarios but is accessible, full of emotion, and escapist.
Privilege: The Musical! is at Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray, Co. Wicklow from Friday 4th of March 2022, with previews on the 2nd & 3rd of March - find out more here.
