We sat down with writer, composer and performer Marty Breen to talk about BITCH, their dark, defiant and genre-bending solo show exploring power, complicity and identity that’s heading to the Pleasance Dome. For tickets go to https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/bitch
What inspired you to create BITCH, and why did it take this particular form?
Two things happened around the same time: I did my first cabaret performance, where I played and sang “If You Really Loved Me” by Tim Minchin in a sexy dress and the audience went wild at the filth of it coming from this unexpected place; and I was working a (sorry to the particular lovely clinic) soul-sucking part-time job as a GP receptionist and dealing with often incredibly rude men and often very fragile women. I was also going through some shit at the time, and one lunch break I wrote the chorus for the main song of the show, “Jasper”; I still have the notepad page with that clinic’s branding. That scrap of paper then sat in a drawer for five years, until last year when so much came out about our favourite problematic comedians, and I also just felt finally ready to make this play. I applied for a mentorship grant and was guided by the 3 best in the Irish biz: Carys D. Coburn (playwright), Denis Clohessy (composer) and Emer Dineen (drag artist), to fill in the gaps in my knowledge and skill for the forms I wanted to use. I owe everything I ended up making to them, and to the whole eventual team. It took this form because I wanted it to by sheer force, and every single one of the incredible BITCH team helped it get there!
How does music and cabaret-style performance play into the storytelling?
Like any musical(ish) play, the music stands in for the things our Bitch character can’t say. She is trapped in this performative language, while she’s quite literally performing femininity; somehow she can be honest with an audience through smoke and mirrors and drag makeup, while using it to go back and figure out when she became like this in a chicken-and-egg investigation. I also grew up watching Tim Minchin as above; he was my favourite comedian for years, and I wanted to make something that brash and abrasive but with a challenging arc to see if that style of clever cabaret-meets-standup could hold a play form. I hope it does.
You’re also an intimacy coordinator. How does that work inform your writing or performance practice, especially in a show like this?
My IC training actually came after having the idea for and starting to make BITCH – so I think the themes of the show might be more tied to why I wanted to become one. We still have a long way to go in terms of the inequities and inequalities of our biz, and I think the more people with the knowledge of how to protect people from that bullshit the better. There is also nothing I love more than being an actor, and nothing I hate more than being an actor not working (like us all), so both theatremaking and intimacy co-ordination felt like something powerful and productive to do with those times and this impulse to change things – both practices fed into each other. Also since qualifying, it’s given me better tools for separating character and performer, so I’ve appreciated that since the last run.
How does creating theatre help you process or provoke change?
As this is my first show, it feels kind of wanky to expect it to change anything or anyone’s mind, but I suppose that must have been part of the impulse for writing it. Particularly with the male character, I wanted to write someone my brothers would like and know; one of the lads, and genuinely a good guy, at least in his own mind – someone easier to like than the raging bitch we are presented with. It’s having a really difficult conversation – how we identify good and bad people – in hopefully a fresh and funny way, that can make people look around at their life and what slips through the cracks when we make allowances for easy people, and judge or write off difficult people.
What advice would you give to other artists tackling difficult or personal subject matter in their work?
Obviously minding yourself outside of the show is the biggest thing, and remembering it’s not you, it’s a character. Bitch is very much a character and a story – there’s elements of experience there but it’s a play, and it is not mine when I get up there. It’s not about you, it’s about the audience. They also have to go through whatever you’re putting yourself through, and it’s your responsibility to be in control, to mind them should they need it, and so taking care of yourself outside the show I guess is how to do that. I become a bit monkish when I’m doing a show like this, very routined and quiet; our wonderful SM Jude Barriscale is gonna be stuck with someone minus craic for the month!
Do you have a favourite line in the show? What is it and why?
There’s a very clear announcement at the beginning of the show and in the opening song that the audience can leave at any time, and should if they want to. But it’s delivered the second time as “You look like you wanna go. Go bitch go.” to a specific audience member. It makes people really nervous, and it makes it feel like a joke. This kind of sets off the tone of the whole piece: not knowing who to believe, so you have to believe your own gut instincts – if you have to go, really do go. If something is telling you something is wrong, then it is. Not many did leave in Dublin Fringe, so either people think it’s part of the cabaret or standup, or maybe they don’t want to. I hope the play does its job enough that they don’t want to, whatever happens.