In this week's Backstage Blog, we sit down with Ella Filar to hear about the creation of their show, The Butcher, The Baker, opening at Explosives Factory on February 5th as part of the 2025 Midsumma Festival!
Q. What is 'The Butcher, The Baker ...' about?
A. “The Butcher, The Baker …” is a tale with a sting in its tail about love, lust and lies, and how they can pose questions around sex and gender within relationships – both from the inside looking out and from the outside looking in.
The story revolves around the main character, Honey, whose lustful search for sexual fulfilment leads her to upend, and eventually destroy utterly, the most important loving relationship in her life. It’s a very dangerous play. It is not rude, but it touches on the darker subconscious of female sexuality. Though the play is not heavy, and is in fact very funny, the subject matter is unsettling.
Q. What inspired you to create the work?
A. “The Butcher, The Baker …” was initially written as a direct response to my time spent living on a feminist commune in the highlands of rural northern New South Wales. This was an intense seven years in which the hierarchies of sex, sexuality and gender were all-important, and they played out on the geography of the mountain itself: the higher the altitude, the more separatist and extreme the feminism. Towards the bottom of the mountain, politics lost its priority and the realities of lust led to somewhat “politically incorrect” practices.
The play takes its cues from my experience as someone who lived towards the bottom of the mountain – somewhere between the hard-core separatists higher up and the cross-dressing men below, whose only access was through deceit. It is about making sense of a world torn between gender politics and sexual identity.
Q. Did you have specific inspirations for the writing of the music?
A. My cultural, academic and musical background is a bizarre mixture of Chopin, church organ music, communist propaganda and Eastern European cabaret. When I turned 14, I rebelled against classical music, the church and communist propaganda, and took to hanging out in “Stodola” – the Warsaw equivalent of “The Chat Noir” in the bohemian Montmartre district of Paris – where, to my delight, I discovered free thought, free love and risqué political satire. Thus began my lifelong affair with the form of cabaret known as “Kabarett”.
However, the precise moment when Melbourne’s “Queen of Cabaret” was born happened almost 20 years later, when I cut my finger to the bone with a kitchen knife and bled all over the kitchen floor! This was a cathartic experience that made me burst into song: a piece that I later named “The Bleeding Heart of an Onion”. It was at this moment that I rediscovered Kabarett, my first love affair, which propelled me into a life of writing, creating and playing music – a practice that still demands my attention every single day.
Q. What would you like the audience to take away from 'The Butcher, The Baker ...'?
A. I am hoping the audience will be blown away by the winds of change and inspired to ask a heap of questions about love, lust and lies: “Is love a cross we all must bear?” “Will faking love get us into deep, deep trouble?” “Is telling lies skating on thin, thin ice?” “If lust is a blast, why is it a sin?” “What is more of a killer: unrequited love or unconsummated lust?” “Can the Devil be a woman?”
And they may ponder questions about gender too: “Does our gender own us, or do we own it?” “Can we go on a ‘gender bender’ and still be straight?” “How far up the mountain are each of us?”
Q. What has been the most memorable moment of the process so far?
A. First produced over 20 years ago at La Mama, “The Butcher, The Baker …” holds many precious memories for me. Seeing the impacts that the writing and music I created so long ago still makes on new people and generations gives me a thrill every time.
And then there’s the excitement of the story itself. Even though I created this narrative, when the jolts and twists and turns reach their climax, it excites me every time I see it unfold – even in rehearsal. It’s almost impossible to nominate what is the most memorable when I find I am savouring every moment with equal zeal and passion.
Don't miss out on this uniquely hilarious show and get on down to Explosives Factory this February! Click the link below to grab those tickets...
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