Shay Mace
There are few names around the Fringe circuit that prompt as much fizzing excitement than Xhloe and Natasha, who’s now trademark style of clownish physical theatre has garnered them much well-earned plaudits, awards and anticipation for what corner of Americana & beyond they’ll explore in their next show. With their new piece Bigfoot Ripped My Dog In Half I Saw It headed to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe next month, we caught up with the duo for a pixelated pint to talk all about conspiracies, Appalachia and 90s nostalgia.
You can catch Bigfoot Ripped My Dog In Half I Saw It at Main Hall at Summerhall on August 6th – 30th from 21:10 (60mins). Tickets are available through the EdFringe Online Box Office.
Shay: Hi Xhloe & Natasha! We last caught up with you at EdFringe last year where you did a victory lap of your three much beloved Fringe First winning shows. Tell us about what you’ve been up to since then.
Xhloe: We’ve been lucky enough to be very busy! We’ve spent the last year pursuing a lot of the opportunities that have come our way in our home city NYC. We did an off-broadway run of What If they Ate The Baby? at Soho Playhouse that was a blast, and we’re currently finishing off a sold out off-broadway run of And Then The Rodeo Burned Down at Ars nova that has been an absolute dream.
Natasha: We’ve been able to travel a bit around the US to teach and chat with students, and other than that we’ve also been kept busy prepping for Fringe! It’s now been two years since we last created a new show from scratch, and that has definitely occupied a lot of our time.
Shay: Your new show Bigfoot Ripped My Dog In Half I Saw It is set in a 90s Appalachian town and features a nine-foot puppet… Tell us about the setting, what has inspired you about it, and what the audience can expect besides the trademark X&N frenetic thunder.
Natasha: Love the phrase frenetic thunder, that’s definitely in there. But we do feel like audiences can expect this piece to be a bit unique from our previous Fringe shows, we are constantly challenging ourselves to stretch our creative instincts and to try things we’ve never done before, so audiences can expect a twist on narrative, unconventional ways of storytelling, and to be asked to pay close attention, I think we do ask a lot of our audience in this show.
Xhloe: We both grew up in eastern/ central Maryland, so objectively not in Appalachia, but also not far. The Appalachian region includes parts of 14 US states so it’s massive and diverse but characterized by a distinct culture of geographic isolation and a lot of cultural assumptions, from other Americans and from the rest of the world. We were interested in talking about poverty, access to information and education, and the way communities are systematically vulnerable, whether politically or even just to natural disasters, so using Appalachia as a setting felt like a great way to tell a story that may feel familiar to a lot of working class people anywhere in the world.
Shay: What will be the first thing the audience sees, feels, and hears as they enter the space?
Xhloe: We’re in the Summerhall Main Hall, so it’s worth noting those beautiful high ceilings. We often operate from a pretty minimal aesthetic and that’s no different in this piece, an empty stage, aside from maybe one road sign, is all you get before we take the stage. Spoiler alert: you have to wait until the show starts to get a glimpse of the mythic puppet.
Natasha: We take our pre-show music experience very seriously, you can expect to hear your favorite late 90s hits, or maybe ones you’ve never heard before, but we’re putting you in the position of the people of this town, what they might have had access to. Maybe you’ll be feeling some sweet 90s nostalgia.
Shay: What are you hoping the audience might take away from the experience, if anything?
Natasha: As always we want to introduce nuance to the questions audiences are asking themselves, rather than encourage them to think what we think, but we’re hoping for audiences to not only take away a new perspective on a part of America they may not know much about, but also to examine the Fringe and the concept of “liveness”. The show has so much to do with seeing something with your own eyes, and how reliable or unreliable that can be, and that’s also the beautiful thing about theatre, that it exists only in the room where it takes place, and once it’s over, all you have is what you saw, or what you thought you saw.
Shay: With EdFringe now just around the corner, what are you most excited for?
Xhloe: We are obviously so excited to share something new and a bit different with our Fringe audiences, and hopefully reach some more. Engaging with our audience, and hearing about what they noticed and took away from our shows is absolutely the best thing about being in Edinburgh. The people who really really love and support our shows engage with them on a level we could have never imagined, their insight, their ideas, their theories, the things they notice we thought maybe no one would, it always impresses us, we can’t wait.
Shay: Given the themes of Binge Fringe, if your show was a beverage of any kind (alcoholic, non-alcoholic – be as creative as you like!), what would it be and why?
Natasha: The show is mysterious, it’s a bit of an overwhelm of the senses, and the “after taste” might subvert what you originally experienced, so maybe a complex smoky cocktail, or maybe something truly chaotic, like a Long Island Iced Tea.
A reminder, you can catch Bigfoot Ripped My Dog In Half I Saw It at Main Hall at Summerhall on August 6th – 30th from 21:10 (60mins). Tickets are available through the EdFringe Online Box Office.
Image Credit: Morgan McDowell
