“I feel lucky that people get to step into my brain for an hour each night.”
WHO: Lil Wenker (not a joke)
WHAT: “Chekhov’s Gum is making their Fringe debut with an all-new clown show, Crap Ballet! One’s big, the other’s small – both suited up and ready to strut, stretch, and shimmy for an hour of stupid. Join us!”
WHERE: theSpace @ Niddry St – Studio (Venue 9)
WHEN: 18:20 (50 min)
MORE: Click Here!
Is this your first time to Edinburgh?
The first time I (Lil Wenker, not a joke) came to Edinburgh, I was 19, never kissed, and eager to see as much CULTURE as possible in my month. In the course of the festival, I saw 60 shows ranging from clown acts to a stand up show where a man made salad in a cement mixer.
Not it’s my first time brining a show up to the festival, and I feel a tremendous excitement that I’m contributing to its madness. Last night, a group of high schoolers came to our highly irreverent clown show, CRAP BALLET, and left happily scandalized. I’ve always loved theater because it opens a door into people’s imaginations for an hour or so. Here in Edinburgh, you can see into countless people’s wild creativity several times a day, every day. It’s intimacy on a large scale meets unbridled creativity that I fell in love with at 19, and now being back at 23 (yes, I’ve been kissed now), I feel lucky that people get to step into my brain for an hour each night.
What are the big things you’ve learned since 2022 and have you absorbed any of the lessons yet?
Edinburgh is a hard but rewarding place! Being in a new country, no one knows us. We started by playing to tiny audiences. Though it could have felt discouraging, the average fringe show’s five person audience speaks to there being so many wonderful things to see this month! What a gift! We usually live in a world where art feels like a luxury, a rare indulgence to break up the monotony of life. But here, people stand in lines to get into shows, run across the cobblestone streets, stay up well past their bedtimes. So we feel grateful, always, to play to any audience.
Tell us about your show.
In 2019, Lil Wenker and David DeRuiter were fatefully cast in a puppet show for children. Lil constructed the puppets with cardboard she found on the side of the road, and David played a talking volcano.
Since then, they have been the best of friends, almost-lovers, and the co-founders of Chekhov’s Gum. They’re a new work theater and comedy production company that specializes in repurposing recyclable material, writing dick jokes, and packing audiences into spaces where performance of any kind could be considered a fire hazard.
CRAP BALLET was born when Lil and David were accepted into a start-up business program at Yale University. As the only arts venture, they found themselves immersed in the world of crypto bros, app developers, and venture capitalists. That summer, the members of their cohort inspired the characters CRAP BALLET. Each character in the show is based on a real person, all of whom have had the fun of seeing themselves depicted on stage!
What should your audience see at the festivals after they’ve seen your show?
Furiozo: Piotr is a master storyteller. He combines a rare level of rowdiness with equal amounts of love and wonder. Something undeniably childlike always rises to the surface in his performance despite the energetic rock and roll beat that underscores the entire performance. Absolutely electric.
Trash Salad: Rosa Garland, aka trash salad, is becoming a cult classic at fringe and deserves every ounce of attention. She is witty and clever, wonderfully weird, and will give you a performance unlike any other. She has a great amount of sensitivity toward the audience, and she makes everyone feel a part of something bigger than themselves.
The Amazing Banana Brothers: The sheer amount of energy Bill exerts in the opening sequence, before the show even begins, is enough to humble most anyone. But the show has only just begun. He goes on to deliver a shocking, surprising, yet still hilarious performance. The show is smart and well written, but above all masterfully performed.
Knight, Knight: Madeleine is a clown from Minnesota ready to blow fringe out of the water. Though this is their first fringe, it surely will not be their last as they deliver, time and again, hilariously unmatched performances. They could do little more than walk across the stage and have everyone in stitches.
Jeremy Segway: I’ve seen the Duncan brothers countless times perform their beautiful hour of chaos, and I love it every time. You go to see a story about the man who created the segway, but you instead are greeted with hilarious disaster after disaster as the show inevitably goes wrong. The brothers play together masterfully.
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