EDINBURGH 2016: BWW Q&A - Elf Lyons
BWW speaks to Elf Lyons about her 2016 Edinburgh Fringe show Pelican.
Tell us a bit about Pelican.
It's my third solo show and the weirdest most personal one to date. It's all about my mum and my love hate relationship with her. Imagine Mommie Dearest but with jokes, no coat hangers and even more theatrical clothes. It's a stand-up ode to motherhood and a comical exploration of my own relationships and my own assessments of what it means to be a grown woman in 2016....
I'm very excited as 1) i think it is funny 2) Hayley Cherkas the designer has made a special costume for the show and it turns me into a very fashionable sexy dressage horse....
What was the inspiration behind the show?
I've never been a very rebellious child but last year I thought 'What is the most rebellious thing I can do?... An uncensored show about my mother that's what!".
Unlike previous stand up shows of mine which have been typically niche and geeky in their angle, i wanted to create comedy from the more darker elements of my life and see how I could turn the darker things from my childhood into something funny, honest and theatrically wonderful on stage.
I am very inspired by live art and the different theatrical methods used in performance art, in particular by artists such as Bryony Kimmings and UrsulA Martinez to make shows around difficult subject matter but in a way that has a end result of being theatrical, beautiful, funny and accessible to a wide audience.
What have you been up to since your last performance at the festival?
Since last Edinburgh I moved to Paris and spent the last year studying at L'Ecole Philippe Gaulier - completing the first year of his two year drama training. I studied Bouffon, Mime, Greek Tragedy, Clown, Characters and a whole array of other theatre genres. It has been a very intense but wonderfully bohemian year. I tried to release my mini Simone de Beuvoir in Paris but ended up just being a complete british cliche! Like Owen Wilson in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris.
On top of that I've just completed Duckie's Homosexualist Summer School at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern - mentored by UrsulA Martinez. I was part of 15 young LGBTQ+ live artists who were mentored over a period of three weeks to develop a new piece of live art which we performed at Duckie, Chelsea Theatre and Latitude Festival.
Who would you recommend comes to see Pelican?
Everyone! Particularly teenage girls and fellow young women who have ever felt pressurised by society to 'do it all'.
What's next for you after the Fringe?
I'm setting up my own theatre collective at the moment called RaRaRa Theatre - formed from a collection of Gaulier students. My immediate plans are to finish writing a play I've been developing with actor Ryan Lane and we are looking to perform that in the new year. I've also got lots of characters I've been developing.... so we'll see what happens.....
Timings and ticket information for Elf Lyons: Pelican are available on the edfringe website.
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