The Show
A Massive Disappointment is solo show about the shifting definitions of success and failure across cultures, generations, and social media landscapes. The performance will contain subversive humour, elements of clown, aerial circus, a degree of audience interaction, and probably the phrase “oh bless you” several times. The initial seed of the idea came from our own team's experiences with migration and the pressures that came with it. These experiences are part of a wider social and political context that has been accelerated by the advent of new technologies. Social media and influencer culture had already been fueling feelings of inadequacy amongst many Millenials and Gen-Zers. With AI and a worsening global economy added into the mix, it seems that we are in the throes of a seismic shift in how we define a life well-lived. Grindset podcasts tell us that nothing short of greatness is acceptable, but what is the point of greatness on a burning planet? Is it irresponsible to curate our online presence to trick others into thinking that we've “made it” when maybe we are all still faking it? What happens when we openly, shamelessly sit together in our disappointment and disillusionment and see what we can create out of it?
Book tickets here!
The Details
A Massive Disappointment will be on at Applecart Arts in East London, November 5th - 9th 2024. Feral Bird Theatre have a longstanding relationship with Applecart, having developed our first show, Rabbit Hole, during a residency there in 2021.
Applecart Arts is one of nine venues across London to host new and established panlingual work during the month of November.
Feral Bird Theatre is developing this show for Voila Festival, and hopefully beyond! It is a devised piece with a solo performer and creative consultation from other artists in the Feral Bird collective. The show will be rooted in physical theatre, and will have elements of audience interaction, as do all of the Feral Bird shows. Connection with the viewer is at the core of what we do at FBT; we want to bring you into our world and into our brains! We will also be using elements of circus and scripted moments to tell the intertwining stories of migration, expectation, disappointment, and the lessons we can learn from it all.
What Will We Use the Funding For?
The funds raised through this crowdfunder will first go towards practical expenses involved in putting on a show. This includes rehearsal space, promotional materials such as flyers and posters, and props and costume for the show. Any funds raised over our crowdfunding goal will go towards paying our creatives fair rates for their work. At the moment, we are donating our time to this project and working around day jobs and other commitments. Getting more funding would allow us to take a block of time off from other commitments and really focus on the project. This would get the most out of the creative team and the performer, and create a more polished product to then tour to other venues in the future. We as a company are working towards being able to pay ourselves Equity minimum rates every time, and each successful show brings us closer to that goal.
The Distant Future
Naturally, we hope this project is a huge success, has a sold-out run, fantastic reviews, and an eventual big tour ahead of it. We want to tell the story of migration in the modern age, family relationships across cultures, and the pressures that we put on ourselves to be "successful." We want this story to be relevant to as many people as possible, and we know that each person will filter it through their own experience.
If all of our dreams come true, and A Massive Disappointment turns out to be a massive success, we would like to pass it on to another artist. We would like someone else to weave their story into the fabric of the original story, and develop it to tell how these issues affect someone with a different background to our lead performer. To do this, we would place a call out for artists with a history of migration, either 1st or 2nd generation immigrants, and choose someone who would bring a fresh perspective to the questions that the show tries to unpick. We would then work with them to keep developing the show to respond to their story and performance style. And all of this would be done with the agreement that after a given point, they would pass the show on to yet another artist, and so on. As humans our time with a given idea is often quite short, but by sharing and growing together, we can keep writing our stories long into the future.