Darkly cynical comedy Three Little Pigs is the result of a meeting of minds (and watching way too much crime thriller TV series) between director Tara Notcutt and artists Rob van Vuuren, James Cairns and Albert Pretorius and, oh boy, is it taking them places, writes Theresa Smith
THE ENGAGING quartet has just returned from Perth, Australia, where they played at the State Theatre Centre as part of the Fringe World Festival.
They were invited to Perth as part of the World Fringe Alliance’s creative exchange programme and are already planning their trips to Edinburgh as part of The Assembly’s line-up, Amsterdam and the US. Plus, they have just been awarded best production for Woordfees in Stellenbosch and completed a run in Oudtshoorn at the KKNK.
“Having toured, I must say Grahamstown rocks the party,” said Tara Notcutt of the National Arts Festival. It’s turning into her favourite arts festival “because it’s so organised, and the people are so welcoming”.
“If you’re a foreigner they make sure you’re sorted. Like, the Australians who came out last year were blown away by how helpful everyone was, and the level of support they received.
“Yes, at some places the technical people are young, but they’re capable. It’s not to say that other places are incompetent.
“When I say I’m getting ready for Grahamstown and people say ‘but it’s so cold’, I don’t care, it’s awesome. The more I see, the more I appreciate the work we have here,” said Notcutt.
Next year the plan is to play New York City and we can do more, like including Boston, Notcutt tells Rob van Vuuren as he sits down.
We are meeting to talk about the new show he is planning for this year’s National Arts Festival, but it’s hard not to talk about their success with Three Little Pigs which will be reprised at this year’s festival and will tour the world until at least August next year.
“We were not prepared for the way Three Little Pigs blew up,” said Notcutt.
“It’s a little bit overwhelming, actually. It’s just because so much has come from it, so many opportunities. I’ve never been in a show with so many legs,” said Van Vuuren.
Unlike some of the other successful work he has been involved in, Three Little Pigs needed minimal tweaking since its debut on the Arena programme in Grahamstown last year. Though, to be fair, it did take quite a bit of work on their part to create it in the first place.
“This we wrote as a play and it turned out to be awesome. We’re still pinching ourselves,” continued Van Vuuren.
He has helped to start a stand-up night on Mondays at TriBakery in Cavendish Mall, which is why we’re meeting at the venue.
Van Vuuren roped Notcutt in to help out on the admin side – she’s good at it – but he had ulterior motives. He wanted to expose her to stand-up so they could work together on his next production, which will be called What What.
He’s spent the past two years doing more straight stand-up, after having done physical theatre with multiple characterisation for several years.
Right now he’s deliberately stepping away from both, trying to experiment with something new: “I want to do something a little fresh, a lot more theatrical, written to a theme.”
He’s looking for something with physical virtuosity “meaning the execution, the amount of work that goes into creating a scene…like a high-end picture in your mind that is created by how physical the creator becomes”.
While he loves the delivery of stand-up he wants to surprise the audience with a more theatrical and emotive element.
“I want to bring stand-up to a new level. I guess that sounds insulting to stand-up, but no, that’s not what I mean. I love changing up on myself and I’ve never worked with a director on stand-up.”
Van Vuuren is interested in upping the level of respect audiences and management display towards stand-up comedians as artists now that he’s become intimately aware of just how difficult an art form it really is: “It is one of the most terrifying things… it’s a particular performance, a particular knife’s edge that you walk every night.”
“Coming from a theatrical background I didn’t know much about stand-up. It’s the most naked you can get as a performer. It’s just you on the stage, trying to make people laugh,” Notcutt said.
“You become much more aware of the creative aspect of it, the mechanics of the gags,” said Van Vuuren.
So, between now and the end of June when they travel to Grahams-town, don’t be too surprised if you see these two furiously scribbling away at a table at TriBakery on a Monday evening.
