Adelaide cabaret diva Anya Anastasia is painfully dedicated to her craft.
“I had a needle in my arm when you called,” she says. “I went into my shipping container in the hills to get some costumes out and I managed to slice my leg open on a rusty, old Australian Dance Theatre costume trunk and put myself at risk of tetanus.”
If that injury doesn’t show her devotion to her craft, Anya’s return to the Adelaide Fringe Festival surely will, as she will be performing in two very different shows for audiences to enjoy.
“I am always one for a full schedule. Last year I was doing two shows and running a venue. I’m doing just the two shows this year, which is the equivalent of me scaling back,” she laughs.
The first is ‘Rogue Romantic’, which Anya and her all-female band are bringing back to the Adelaide Fringe after a short season last year.
“It is about that empowerment and ownership and seizing the stage,” Anya explains. “There’s the day-to-day, normal Anya Anastasia who is very polite and accommodating, and used to get walked over a little bit – certainly in relationships. So she’s crafted an alter-ego to stand-up for me, say my side of the story and overthrow expectations and reject expectations that I felt had been placed on me. It has that ferocity of claiming my side of the story and pushing back.”
‘Rogue Romantic’ will be different to how audiences remember it, with Anya fine-tuning it to present a completely new experience.
“I had the opportunity to develop the songs even further and craft a very exciting hour that I’m extremely proud of. Now there’s new numbers in it, new songs, new look, new costumes and new jokes to keep the loyal fans happy. But it is still a high-intensity, physical show, so you might be sweated on in the front row seats and that’s probably not the half of it. You might have an overzealous cabaret diva doing a handstand on your lap.”
'The Executioners'
Anya will also be debuting her new show ‘The Executioners’, which she describes as more experimental than previous work.
“Some of the things I’m putting under the microscope are social media, tech addiction, fake news, and that need for immediate gratification and how that’s influencing news and how we digest information and the disconnect. It’s really exciting to do that in a theatrical context where you’ve got such great tools as lighting and projections so you can create that feeling of overwhelm that I think we’ve all experienced when we’re trying to get to the bottom of something; we can get side-tracked from what’s important.”
If her past shows weren’t physical enough, ‘The Executioners’ sees Anya working with stuntmen who’ve worked on such films as ‘Ghost In The Shell’ and ‘The Wolverine’ to choreograph some fight scenes.
“My accompanist, Gareth Chin, revealed to me not so long ago that he’s a Kung Fu practitioner and teacher, and has his own dojo. I said, ‘I’ll be damned if we’re not using that in the show’.”
It may be a lot of work to perform two very different shows, but Anya feels “it’s not actually as hard when you have as much daily sources of inspiration as I do”. There may even be a show inspired by her recent clumsiness.
“’Tetanus: The Musical’. Why not?” she laughs.
