Michele A’Court, Natalie Samy, James Roque, David Correos and Ray O’Leary at The Tuning Fork (Photo: supplied)
Michele A’Court, Natalie Samy, James Roque, David Correos and Ray O’Leary at The Tuning Fork (Photo: supplied)

SocietyDecember 7, 2021

At Auckland’s first comedy show post-lockdown, laughter never sounded so good

Guest writer
Michele A’Court, Natalie Samy, James Roque, David Correos and Ray O’Leary at The Tuning Fork (Photo: supplied)
Michele A’Court, Natalie Samy, James Roque, David Correos and Ray O’Leary at The Tuning Fork (Photo: supplied)

My goodness I’d missed this feeling, writes standup comedian Michele A’Court.

There’s a bit right at the top of the show before I start talking when I look out at the roomful of faces and think: Look at you, you beautiful humans all gathered together in one place for the first time in 107 days, aren’t you fucking awesome for coming out and being with each other. And so that’s exactly what I say to them, and you can tell they feel pretty good about it, too, and it feels like we all deserve a round of applause for getting this far, so we do that, and then I remember how to do comedy and start the show.

It’s Friday, day one of the traffic light system – red in Tāmaki Makaurau – and the Tuning Fork is the first venue to open up with live comedy. The Classic, our full-time comedy club, will open a day later to equally enthusiastic comedians and punters. It’s one of the great things about comedy as opposed to theatre, dance or music – you can get it up fast. No rehearsals, no lines to learn or sets to build or bands to get back together. Just lights and a PA, and enough time to get the tickets sold.

This show went on sale last Monday and the room is just over half-filled to its socially distanced capacity of one hundred. Interestingly, next Friday’s gig sold out first – an indication maybe of a little hesitancy about live gigs, or that the thing people most wanted to do immediately was catch up with friends rather than watch a show. The people in the room are mostly in pairs, mostly in their 20s and 30s. There’s an unusually small (though still enthusiastic) response when I ask the menopausal women in the room to make some noise.

They’ve all come masked, vaccine passes ready, and are served by bar staff at their tables. The only person who buggers this up is me when towards the end of the night I go looking for my first wine and don’t know how the system works, and get asked very politely to step away from the bar area. I feel like a dick, like I’ve gone to someone’s house and noticed halfway through dinner that I’m the only person who’s got their shoes on. Despite being an idiot, I am allowed a wine.

Michele A’Court on stage, left, and Michele’s photo of the audience (Photos supplied)

She’s a helluva line-up – Natalie Samy, Ray O’Leary, Donna Brookbanks, David Correos and James Roque (and me). We’ve been messaging each other all week – dying to get back to work, and also sick with nerves. The more gigs you do, the better you are which means we’re all sure we’ll be quite shit by now. I spend the whole day waiting for the show, distracting myself occasionally with vital chores like cleaning out my handbag. I listen to an audio recording of a gig to see if I can remember how my jokes go.

We all arrive stupid early. In the green room it is collectively agreed we are allowed to take our masks off and also to hug each other and it is delightful. We swap work stories – Correos and Roque have both just shot episodes of Give Us A Clue. David says it’s his favourite ever TV experience and Ray cannot believe he is ranking it above Taskmaster NZ but David insists he is. Which is what comedians do, really – say something that feels right at the time, then defend it to the death, but also change our minds later if we want.

There’s been online community chatter all week about how much we should talk about lockdowns and Covid and vaccinations, and there are two schools of thought. One is that people are sick of it all – bored with the subject, tired of the divisions, looking for distraction. The other is that are you fucking mental, of course we have to talk about what our lives have been like since August and who doesn’t want to hear about how we got through. Plus pre-lockdown stories that start, “So I was in Hamilton,” won’t fly because no you weren’t, the border is closed.

We talk about this and decide, you know what? Let’s tell the stories we most want to tell and do what makes us happy because that kind of attitude is catchy and it’ll make the audience happy, too.

I have new stories about turning into a 1950s housewife and DIY personal grooming which get sandwiched between the other bits I remember about climate change and the pay gap, and I am particularly pleased at the way they laugh at my joke about anti-vaxxers at the top of the show because, oof, those people have made it easy for me to access my rage over past months and turning that anger into a gag is what I live for.

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    After so long away, it’s possible some punters have forgotten the difference between a show and a Facebook thread. While Natalie is on stage, a woman comes over to our table and says, “You’re very funny, but…” and every comedian knows how this is going to go. “You’re very funny, but you need to let people make their own decisions.” And I have a million things to say about individual rights versus collectively responsibility in a global pandemic, and that my job is to express my sincerely held opinions and other comedians will express theirs, and that also the gag had worked a treat. But what I actually say is, “Go and sit down” in my best Mother Voice while pointing at her table, and she does.

    Every comedian flies, and all of us are buzzing afterwards. We talk about how we’ve missed this version of ourselves – who each of us is, but dialled right up to be at our sharpest and shiniest. I stay up later than I have since August and, in the morning, when I look at the photos I took of the audience from the stage at the end, I get a bit weepy. I can even see the lady who had been mad at me at the start. She is grinning back at me now, waving her hands in the air.

    That problem we’ve had lately with social cohesion? Now that we can be in a room together, I think we might be OK.

    Keep going!
    From left to right: Tom Clarke, Alice Canton, Freya Finch and Scotty Cotter in Silo Theatre’s Break Bread.
    From left to right: Tom Clarke, Alice Canton, Freya Finch and Scotty Cotter in Silo Theatre’s Break Bread.

    SocietyDecember 7, 2021

    Silo Theatre’s boisterous digital experience Break Bread, reviewed

    A bunch of people
    From left to right: Tom Clarke, Alice Canton, Freya Finch and Scotty Cotter in Silo Theatre’s Break Bread.
    From left to right: Tom Clarke, Alice Canton, Freya Finch and Scotty Cotter in Silo Theatre’s Break Bread.

    After a pandemic’s worth of postponements, Silo Theatre finally gets Break Bread in front us, from behind a screen. Here’s what four of our writers thought.

    Chaotic and cheeky from start to finish

    In Silo Theatre’s new virtual theatre show Break Bread, a jar of rewena starter grows mould, parts of a life-sized cardboard model of the Titanic teeters, courier drivers and flatmates knock at the door, interrupting energetic monologues. Lilliputian disasters come knocking on as the show traverses a millennia of famous large-scale catastrophes.

    Three cigarette-smoking aunties in robes are “gutted, actually” at the death of their children during the Plague of the Firstborn, the origin story of the Jewish Passover. Incongruous accents in a very inappropriate reenactment of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius heighten the chaos of the show. Break Bread is cheeky from start to finish and, at many points, inappropriately funny – my laughter was often accompanied by a pang of guilt when I remembered what exactly it was that I was laughing at.

    The intersection between my own chaotic work-from-home life and that of the scenes playing out inside my screen only added to the comedy of the experience. Just as I began mixing flour and water in my hands as instructed, my property manager arrived for an inspection. He surveyed the state of my walls and floors while I created a tiny ball of water and flour in my left hand.

    Many often lament that the intimacy of theatre is lost when the experience is intermediated by screens. Break Bread proves them wrong, creating a playful exchange between performer and audience, who somehow end up in each other’s homes. Theatre in a time of pandemic restrictions means borrowing techniques and conventions from both stage and screen, and this is done extremely well here.

    It’s near-impossible to view this show without feeling a huge sense of empathy for Aotearoa’s Covid-ravaged creatives – or being moved by their persistence. Break Bread is a truly funny reflection of the horrors of lockdown through the lens of disasters both everyday and historical. So too is it a reminder that comedy – like the simple act of baking bread – is a necessary balm in a chaotic world.

    – Charlotte Muru-Lanning, staff writer

    It’ll make you feel a little bit less alone

    Life is absurd. That’s what the team at Break Bread have captured with their triumphant and increasingly chaotic performance. From the start, the team blends together theatre and screen conventions to produce a unique experience, with a timed countdown reminiscent of old Hollywood movies. Break Bread manages to walk the line between theatre and screen at every turn, utilising split screens, ingenious use of lighting and set design, and fourth-wall breaks. They retain the feeling of a live performance with unexpected “character breaks” that bring a sense of chaos to the piece. But make no mistake, every frame is meticulously crafted, and although the loose episodic structure is disorientating, by the end the viewer suddenly finds the narrative wrapped up in a bow. 

    It’s an interactive experience too, and that helped to bring a palpable sense of connection through the internet. My flatmates and I, wired after a long day at work, found ourselves tricked into a calming meditation as Scotty led us through tactile exercises. But Break Bread is anything but straightforward, and as the scene slowly collapsed, the increasing chaos literally spilled over from their world to ours; our glass of water tipped over a pile of clothes. 

    Confronting, confusing, unique, hilarious and intensely relatable, Break Bread will make you feel a little bit less alone. Now, more than ever, Break Bread proves the urgent and essential nature of the arts. 

    – Naomii Seah, intern

    Freya Finch, Scotty Cotter and Alice Canton in Silo Theatre’s Break Bread.

    Irreverent, witty and full of Kiwi ingenuity

    Silo Theatre’s Break Bread asked me to scoop a quarter cup of flour into a bowl, fill a glass with water, dampen a tea towel and turn on a lamp in lieu of lighting a candle. It took less than five minutes, and I plonked myself down on my couch at 8.30pm, pressed play on my laptop and watched the 70-minute show.

    It soon became clear that this was a show full of irreverence, wit and Kiwi ingenuity. In a retelling of the Titanic disaster, crinkly blue tarpaulins represent the Atlantic Ocean and cardboard boxes stand in for the sinking ship. I learned the ship’s baker, Charles Joughin – here “played” by a toilet roll – was one of the last people atop the vessel as it plunged down into the sea; he somehow survived the frigid water and was later rescued. In a section on the eruption of Mt Vesuvius, the makeshift togas, clipped together with clothes pegs, may have said “Pompeii” but the mix of hilariously inaccurate accents meant I was travelling the world in search of the tourist attraction.

    The pandemic has been tough on everyone but especially our creatives, and in that context Break Bread is a clever commentary on their current predicament. The four actors are “working” from their homes where flatmates interrupt monologues and couriers knock on doors. As I watched the play on screen, in the next room over knives, chopping boards and pots crashed noisily as my partner washed the dishes. It was perfect timing: at the same time I was being gently instructed to “feel the water molecules hydrating the proteins” as I mixed the quarter-cup of flour I’d been told to bring with water from my glass. Admittedly I didn’t follow the instructions at all and that’s on me, but it was enough just to hear that I could have squashed my little ball of dough in my hands and tell myself: “I am enough”. 

    Whether recorded or livestreamed, a virtual production like this can never replace the real deal – and nor should it. But Break Bread demonstrates that, with gumption and a “go hard or go home” attitude, a theatre show can keep audiences entertained, all from the comfort of their couches.

    – Reweti Kohere, staff writer

    High energy, shot through with melancholy

    For all of the humour and high energy of its sketches and scenes, Silo Theatre’s Break Bread left me feeling unavoidably melancholy. I love these performers, I love this theatre company, and I love the passion and fervour that goes into staging a production like this. But with all that said – I so wish I could have seen this in a theatre.

    That might read like a slight on the show, but it’s this melancholy – this sense of loss – that Break Bread is tapping into. Whatever it was meant to be originally, it’s now a show about the pandemic, and the spectre of Covid-19 seeps into every moment of this digital production. Whether it’s the initial framing of the show by all four actors on their respective screens, or the ramshackle nature of Freya Finch’s Titanic props, or the very relatable, quiet mania of Scotty Cotter living alone, this is a show that is telling a story about getting through by whatever means necessary.

    The seams do reveal themselves: the scale of the performances don’t always match the size of the frame, some sketches stumble over the finish line, and the connecting tissue between themes and scenes isn’t as tight as it could be. However, what initially felt awkward – like the initial Israelite scene which longs to be told by performers in a room with an audience – eventually won me over through sheer chutzpah. After postponement, after redevelopment, after over 100 days in lockdown, Silo got the thing done. Break Bread didn’t come through it unscathed, but the show is on, it’s out there, and it’s ready for an audience to lap up, and hopefully see a little bit of themselves in.

    Now I want to see what they can do next year. 

    – Sam Brooks, staff feature writer

    Society