As part of this year's Horizon Festival on the Sunshine Coast, playwright, novelist, and screenwriter Kirk Lynn will present 'The Cold Record'.
A punk rock 'tape play', the show is all about a boy who tries to set the record for leaving school the most days with a fever, and falls in love with the school nurse in the process.Shhh. It's a secret.
To tell us more about the show and its inspiration, Kirk sat down and answered a few questions.
First of all, tell us a little bit about 'The Cold Record'.
'The Cold Record' is a performance that's supposed to feel like a punk show. It's fast, low-fi, emotional. In the first 30 minutes of the show everyone shares a punk song that matters to him, her or them and we make a mixed tape unique to that show. (And I don't care how you define punk rock. I think nothing is less punk than judging how other people define punk rock!) In the second 30 minutes I tell a semi-true story of a boy who tries to set the record for missing the most days of school with a fever and ends up falling in love with the school nurse and breaking his heart on punk rock. If it works, it all comes together in the end and everyone is happy. And usually there's free cheap sh.tty beer.
Where did the idea for it come from?
I love punk and I wanted to make something that captured the feeling. It goes too fast. It's not reasonable or well-acted by traditional theatrical standards. It's earnest and loud and passionate. I developed the text first which had a speed and a rhythm that I was enchanted by. It was like a magic spell that made me feel wild. And slowly, by working the text over and showing it to friends and getting notes and doing it all over again it started to feel like something I meant and could stand behind.
You've said about how great it is that the show is so easily transportable. Did you intend for it to be like this from the get-go?
A few years ago Rude Mechs (theatre company) lost our theatre space and we all started trying to make work that didn't need a theatre. I travel a lot and I wanted to have a show that I could just pull out of my bag and say, “this is what I mean by theatre”. We have a theatre again, but I still love to do this show and to see it travel around the world. So many theatres are big giant expensive wastes of our cultural time. Too many shows are getting produced without any meaning or passion. So it's nice to have a show that doesn't need anyone to approve it or fund it. I mean, it's great to be in a festival and be supported, but at first I did this show for friends in a burned out warehouse and I'll probably still do it that way after all the festivals are done with me.
What do you love about tape recorders? Tell us about how they're utilised in this show.
I grew up with tape players. I'm 47 years old. Tape players let us own music we could only grab off the radio. And my sister would tape TV shows on audio cassette so that when our parents told us to go to bed she could listen to hundreds of old episodes of TV which was brilliant. And tapes allow you to talk to someone. You can tape yourself saying, "Explain yourself as best you can" at random intervals on a tape and then play it back and talk to it and you have a great show. I always found tape recorders to be friendly machines. They have little faces where the reels are the eyes going googly as they sing to you. And you can edit and sample and record and playback, all with just four or five buttons, so unlike computers you don't have to learn a lot of code. And you can spy on people. And you can steal music. And they're cheap right now because they're just at the edge of becoming actual trash (and then they'll get expensive again).
What are you looking forward to about bringing it to Horizon Festival on the Sunshine Coast?
Oh, I think there are misfits everywhere and this show is for all the wild kids who feel lost and alone and need a good punk rock mixtape to get them through the next week. I can't wait for the show to meet up with your misfits and give 'em a kick in the ass and a punch in the arm and a free beer or two and make everyone feel temporarily better. It's also a good occasion to study up on Australian punk which is pretty rich! And when we're all sharing songs it's a great time to learn a lot.
You're one of five Artistic Directors from Rude Mechs theatre collective, and you've written and adapted over 20 plays. What do you love about the art of theatre?
I like making something that disappears. Great theatre is like a ghost or a god. It can never be proven. Those that have seen the Loch Ness Monster or the Yowie are totally convinced and those that have not can just continue with their boring lives of denial. It's fun to be in the room with people and heard. I don't really mess with the internet very much. I like sitting around and making things and not worrying about how long those things will be around or how rich they will make me, although I have gotten a lot of money from the theatre by my standards. And when you really think about performance it's pretty formless, which I like. I love to go see performances where I don't know what to expect at all. People throwing water balloons at each other or rewriting Van Morrison lyrics to talk about their first pap smear, that kind of thing.
Is there anything you're particularly passionate about currently that you're itching to write a play on?
I love to pray with people. I was raised sort of religiously conservative. It didn't take. But I do love prayer and the formal constructs of it. I love to ask big rooms of people to pray with me. And I've written a lot of prayers that function as performances and use call and response and ritual hand gestures. People who come to performance and art shows get pretty nervous when you start praying and laying on hands, especially if you are totally sincere about it. I hope everyone who reads this sentence gets an unexpected kiss this week. Amen.
How do you hope audiences react to 'The Cold Record'?
I hope they cry and send me money. I hope they quit their boring jobs and pursue a useless life in the arts. I hope they're better to their most f...ed up loved ones, the ones who need the most love. I hope they see how easy it is to make a show that matters to them and make their own shows and then write to me and tell me about it. I hope to meet a new best friend.
