Clips from our Elimination Rounds Tour, 2010.
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Here's a thing I wrote to promote Elimination Rounds and be offensive, and a text from Drowning Bird which was done by Joel from inside a cardboard box.
YOU DON'T YOUR NEED YOUR COLOURED GOGGLES FOR THIS SHIT

Or: "Towards an Undead Theatre"

Remember how your youth group leader used to take someone hip, like Eminem, and say: "You know, there was this guy called Jesus, and he was pretty much doing what Eminem is doing, 2000 years ago, in Jerusalem.” And you believed him, right? That youth group leader sure knew how to make something old and irrelevant look new and appealing: he compared it to something you cared about. It’s an old trick, and you’ll find it works with just as well with Shakespeare, and poetry, and lots of other dead things.  In this article, I’m going to try and be like that youth group leader, only I want to tell you about theatre.  As we all know, theatre was murdered by TV and film long before we were born. Or was it? Can it be resurrected? Do we need what famous zombie director Peter Brook (11 and 12) called for: an Undead Theatre?
 
Let me begin.

There's been a lot of fuss recently about cinema realising that it can "do 3D."

No it fucking can't.  Theatre can do 3D. Effortlessly. Everything it does is totally in all directions. Look at all the dimensions. It can do smells too. At the end, the performers and you have been through something together. You know the phrase “break a leg?” Actors can break legs. In theatre, things actually happen to people and you’re there to witness it.

So forget  Avatar, taste the next big thing. You might not have heard about it. It’s not on at Readings, or the Embassy. It cost less than a million dollars to make. It’s a theatre show.
 
Binge Culture's Elimination Rounds, is, in conclusion, a theatre show. It is better than Jesus.  In it, there’s a leafblower, a feeding frenzy, a live band, and a lion mauling. People pretend to be in danger. People get sort of naked. Gravity exerts its force upon objects.  Wellington is built onstage and destroyed by a monster.

My gosh, you say, can theatre do all this? Can it really be as hip as Eminem? To which I reply: heck yes, kid, and you won’t even need your 3D glasses.

*****

You know, not all performers are naturally extroverted.
Many of them are quite shy, off the stage.
Actually, a lot of people get on the stage for the same reasons that a lot of people get drunk.
When you're on the stage,
Or on the piss,
You get to be funnier than you are in everyday life.
You get to be bolder.
More flirtatious.
You get to do things you wouldn't normally get to do.
Because people are generally more understanding when you're drunk.
Or acting.
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Tricks and Traps 27/01/2010
 
This envelope is adapted to survive and reproduce in the jungle. It is an eye catching  yellow and red, divided into sections: priority delivery in one, in another, an outline of a jet plane. There are two small boxes next to winner authenticated, and look, the "yes" one has been printed with a tick it it. In another section, a warning that I have a deadline before which to collect my prize.

All of these adaptations are geared toward the opening of this letter by an individual of my species.  Thousands are scattered like seed pods in letterboxes all down my street, and will succeed with a few.

Not me though. I will not be fooled by such basic tricks: wings that look like eyes, harmless snakes disguised as venomous ones, sentimental music in films, artificial perfumes, this envelope.

Though I'll never know unless I check...

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Who dares wins: Marc Ellis cuts off a woman’s ponytail for $50, gets her quick before she realises quite what’s happening. She's a grandmother, and goes quiet and looks genuinely horrified at what has happened, like she's been done by confidence trickster. This operation looks legitimate- there's  camera, celebrity and consent-  but isn't shaving off a woman’s hair a pretty traditional way of destroying her? Ellis, (upbeat, matey, looking desperate) pounces before she changes her mind. Snip, snip...

-Ralph
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