In this week's Backstage Blog, we sit down with director Steph Lee to get some insider information about her upcoming production, SLAY, opening at Explosives' Factory on Friday 21 March!
Q. What should audiences expect when they come to see SLAY?
A. Audiences should expect lots of camp, a splash of fake blood and some lesbian extremism when they come to see SLAY. The piece moves between the real and the online, looking at how both are so interconnected now and the shift in the role an online presence has in boosting political groups. While this all sounds very serious (and is), SLAY is also lots of fun in parts leaning into the campy horror aesthetics of shows like ’Scream Queens’. We are very lucky to have a brilliant team of designers on the show, so you can expect a full experiential treat watching SLAY!
Q. Are there any horror movies that have inspired the creation of SLAY? Or any horror tropes that you’ve leant into?
A. Yes, there are lots of little horror movie Easter eggs in SLAY that we have pulled from our reference movies! Some movies that have inspired us are ‘Scream' (the OG), ‘BOTTOMS', 'Jennifer’s Body', 'Bodies, Bodies, Bodies' and the TV shows 'Scream Queens' and 'American Horror Story 1984’. We certainly have been playing with tropes a lot in the creation of SLAY, where we lean into them and where we try to flip them a little bit. I don’t want to give away too many things but we definitely explore the Final Girl trope, that much I can tell you!
Q. What inspired you to create this show?
A. SLAY's show draft has been a collective effort from Jackie van Lierop, Anita Mei La Terra, Raven Rogers-Wright, Louisa Cusumano, Sarah Iman and myself (with early contributions from Liimei Lim and Anna Fujihara).
This show idea has been living in my brain rent free for a couple of years and is kind of an amalgamation of a few different pitches I’ve done while studying at university. When I was studying at Monash, I co-directed a devised project over Zoom based on Carmen Machado’s queer ghost story ‘Real Women Have Bodies’. From here the idea of women disappearing and how the media/world reacts to that started to form. The other major inspiration was a poetic journal I did in my first year at the VCA on ’The Law of Remains’ by Reza Abdoh. A lot of the reference images and quotes from that journal informed the way I started to build SLAY initially and Abdoh’s affective use of language inspired me to consider how I could shape a modern horror around a bombardment of information. The other inspiration in creating this show of course is my love of making queer, feminist work and using dark humour to explore modern tensions, which the horror genre became the perfect means to realise given the current state of the world.
From these inspirations, I had an idea of the core of the piece and began pitching it to the team to onboard them to collaborate on it. There were lots of varying inspirations from that point onwards, with a lot of language taken from extreme right wing influencers like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson. Also horror movie inspiration started informing tropes, specific dialogue and imagery in the show.
Q. What do you hope audiences take away from this show?
A. I think most importantly I just hope audiences enjoy the show and feel like they experienced something because the affective power of theatre is what made me fall in love with the form. I hope audience laughs, I hope they get a little bit overwhelmed by the amount of information they have to take in and I hope that causes them to reflect on how they consume media. As a team, we have really been trying to find our way into exploring how online extremism spreads and the tactics that are being used to create such a polarisation in society. It may sound idealistic but I hope by watching this audiences might be able to spot tactics being used and the way language is manipulated by influencers or politicians to blur fact. Especially with the federal election coming up, now is the time to try bring attention to the importance of being media literate and having the ability to read between the lines when consuming content or engaging in conversations online.
Q. What has been the most memorable moment throughout the creation and rehearsal process?
A. Most memorable moment is a hard one, as there have been lots! I think one of my favourite memories was presenting our first excerpt of the piece at La Mama’s From Scratch last year, it was so terrifying yet thrilling to share some of this work in early form in front of an audience.
Since then, my favourite moments have been all the breakthrough moments in rehearsals whether it be a structuring breakthrough, design breakthrough or a staging breakthrough. We really started this whole work with the concept ‘lesbian horror’ and since then it has been made entirely from scratch before our eyes and that is pretty special.
Don't miss out on this one of a kind show - run to the link below to snatch up those tickets before the mystery killer gets you!
Warning; this is a satirical horror piece, with sudden loud noises, flashing lights, haze, gore, depictions of death, homophobia, course language.
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