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Please Go Hop.
"Amber, how would you describe 'Please Go Hop'," asks Cameron Goodall, as a way of getting us started. "Ooooh, well!," Amber McMahon mocks. "It's an 'eighties board game for actors. I like to think of it as 'It's A Knockout' - that's the aim of the game. It's very 'gamey' but there's lots of performance tasks."
Goodall and McMahon are both members of The Border Project, an alliance of theatre graduates from Flinders University, and when they're not too busy doing other shows, they find a little space for things such as 'Please Go Hop'.
The 1980s. It's the decade of bad taste isn't it? Certainly it's the decade in which these two grew up, hence the group's fascination with, and determination to put on a show which encapsulates the best and worst... to which end the six actors who perform in 'Please Go Hop' put together little cards as a promotional item listing some of their favourite things from that decade.
Among other things, McMahon chose influences such as 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' and fluro wrist snaps. "They kind of epitomised all that was bad," we snigger.
I can't believe nobody picked Conan The Barbarian! Says McMahon, "That is true actually. Maybe he can resurface..." Adds Goodall, "There's room for Conan somewhere."
Which means, in terms of 'Please Go Hop', I think, they get to fool around a lot whilst keeping themselves and their audience interested. Is this all too vague? Audiences in Adelaide didn't think so when 'Hop's first season was a five star show in the last Fringe. Nor too did Melbourne Fringe audiences, who made it a sold out show. It's curious, the two note, that their Melbourne audiences chose to sit through all four hours (yes four hours!! Gulp) of the show, rather than wander in and out as the whim took them. This was the proscribed way of 'taking in the show', but apparently people got much too absorbed in the action and the characters.
Did we mention the characters? There are six of them; Katherine Fyffe, Alirio Zavarce, Paul Reichstein, David Heinrich and these two. Pretty much the six real people who are on stage in front of you, and they use their lives and loves from the 'eighties (the decade that taste forgot?) as the starting point for the game that rolls out each and every evening. The action - and the outcome - is never the same. There's a different winner each time they play... although "What you land on can trigger memories, or performances tasks, or dance..." says McMahon.
"We didn't even contemplate that it would happen, but it became very much like a football match. You're there cheering on your performers, as you do players, and you get to know each of them."
Suggests Goodall: "There's a DJ there for the whole show and lights and sound and so on. What we've tried to create is a game where the audience can access common memories about pop culture." It's a good point he makes as he explains, "The Border Project are always looking for new ways to revitalise theatre, and this is one experiment in that."
There's a cut and thrust to the game to, all the actors are striving to win, and it might well be a 'no holds barred' type of affair. It may start off as a board game, but that'd be boring fairly quickly -but the action soon heats up, aided in no small way by the audience, who are seated in the round.
"We don't know how it's going to end either," laughs McMahon, who doesn't want to tell me the story about her dare (she accepted) to skull four shots of vodka mid-game. "But all this strategy that comes out as we progress, because we all know each other. You might get knocked out, you might stay."
Goodall puts the appeal as simply as he knows how: ""Something strikes a chord. The audience just loves to see Amber put on a Darth Vader helmet and deliver a monologue. I can't explain that."
Alex Wheaton
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'Please Go Hop' - the ultimate in 80s pop culture - is on at Fowler's Live from Wed 2 Feb
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