EDINBURGH 2023: PARTY GHOST Q&A

BWW catches up with Jarred Dewey to chat about bringing Party Ghost to the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Tell us a bit about Party Ghost.

Imagine the twins from the Shining as slapstick acrobats and you have Party Ghost. An hour-long dark circus comedy about celebrating your death day, rather than your birthday, in a cartoonish, ridiculous, and tightly crafted clowning duet.

A weeping widow screeches on trapeze in chaotic grief after hurling cucumber sandwiches. A hallway ghost raids a drag closet only to find costumes don’t fit quite like they used to.

In a chopped-up narrative, evil twins struggle to best each other in games, madness, and murder. Astonishing circus duets unfurl through this macabre satire presenting a whole new take on what contemporary circus can look like.

Low-fi but highly skilled, Party Ghost is the quirky Fringe show of your nightmares full of endless surprises and eye watering humour. 

How crucial is the format of the show to the storytelling?

‘Party Ghost’ is more of a fractured thematic zoetrope than a linear story. It follows a loose narrative of two twin sisters who are extremely fed up of sharing their birthday and go to sadistic extremes to get the birthday present at the expense of one another.

The work features circus, dark clown and choreography spliced together with pop cultural references including the ‘Shining’ and Adele. The show is predominantly non-verbal (beside the random blood curdling screams) and is highly physical, so we really use our bodies to tell the story. 

How has it been received so far?

‘Party Ghost’ was concocted in a wild 21-day development as part of ‘Sidesault Festival’ at Circus Oz. Its debut season was met with immediate standing ovations and mentioned as one of ArtsHub ‘10 Most Outstanding Shows in Melbourne 2017'. It was truly an overwhelming and humbling experience.
Since its conception we have only done a handful of seasons, two of which have received awards including ‘Best Experimental Theatre Award 2020 Green Room Awards’ and ‘Overall Best Circus Show’ Adelaide Fringe 2023, alongside numerous 5 star reviews.

The show has been an underground smash hit and has garnered a cult following with multiple repeat offenders returning to our performances.

What were some of the inspirations behind it?

Olivia (Olivia Porter the other half of Party Ghost) had originally developed a solo show featuring a ghost character and I had created a suite of sideshow-esque party tricks club acts. There was a tenuous link between birthdays and death and the more we played around with the opposing concepts the more they seemed to bizarrely fit together. Our work features themes of the serious, the stupid, the beautiful and the grotesque, drawing inspiration from the wonderful world of camp and cult cinema but more specifically the underground horror flicks from the 80s and 90s. 

We were possessed with inspiration drawing from our own personal experiences with death and the deceased, finding joy in the dark as a way to both deal and make light of taboo topics. Concepts of ghostly identities crisis and the perspective of the ghost mourning its worldly senses…

Who would you like to come and see Party Ghost?

Anyone and everyone - we have had audience members from 8 years old to 80 years old love the show. One audience member even said ‘It was the most life affirming show about death’ they had ever experienced. 

I think this show offers something for everyone, it’s wildly entertaining, highly acrobatic, stylishly dramatic and macabrely beautiful. Fans of high-level circus and dark comedy will find this show draw-dropping and hauntingly hilarious and anyone with a twisted sense of humour and a panache for the occult should book front row seats to experience the spine-tingling sadistic sibling seance. 

Party Ghost will be performed at 2.55pm in Assembly Checkpoint from 2nd – 27th August (Not 14th or 21st)

Booking link: https://assemblyfestival.com/whats-on/party-ghost

Photo credit: Hamish McCormick

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