Hoooboy do I have gossipy backstory for you.
So, your mate Tomás Ford is back at the Fringe this year. If it weren't a big and weird enough deal to be back at the Fringe after a couple of really weird ones (The Fxxk You lost us a bunch of money but was really fun and then last year I was still reeling from the fallout of watching my baby Noodle Palace grow up to be a festivalwrecking nightmare in the three years after I left)... even without that, this years' Fringe comes with BIG INTENSITY.
So, for background, I've spent the last year up and down to Malaysia on a creative exchange program through AsiaLink at the Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre and Kuching's Rainforest Fringe. As it turns out, what I have been working on was a cabaret show. Which wasn't always clear.
I'd intended to do a couple of different kinds of shows when I went up - first a collab with my pal Ze Rebelle, and then a high concept Indiana Jones musical follow up to my spy thriller Chase! about colonialism and Borneo and... stuff.
Anyway, both of those projects hit big roadblocks, and I decided to spend my first three weeks figuring out what I was going to make, learning as much as I could culturally and exploring Kuala Lumpur and Kuching.
Two weeks in, just as my wife arrived to join me, the batch of songs that make up TOMÁS FORD IN KUALA LUMPUR started pouring out. Having mental space away from the year I'd had - my wife's uncertain diagnosis of "probably lupus," my getting an ADHD diagnosis, my finances being all over the place (ADHD, being bad at personal finances plus the expenses of flying from Perth) and being away with my 14 year old son (puberty - OH GOD PUBERTY) - was so nice.
When my wife was due to arrive, everything came back into focus and I had to deal with it again. So it vomited out of me, an initial burst of seven songs in five days which has NEVER HAPPENED and was so intense and draining and kinda awful - but the songs themselves were little miracles. Honest, funny and weird and unlike anything else I'd done - hell, they were written on ukulele, which I couldn't even really play before I went away. This was obviously the show I was making, whether I liked it or not.
The more I wrote the show, the more it felt like what I should be doing. But also, the scarier it got. It's so honest that I am still, less than a week out, yet to work up the guts to play a few of these tunes to my wife. She's OK with this whole thing and has been amazing about it, but... it gets pretty dark. I'm not sure I seem like a great person by the end of it. But it also feels like something that anyone who has had to support their partner through something will relate to.
I can see this show changing and evolving over the coming year - if you've ever seen one of my shows for a second time, you probably know I tinker heavily. Most of my shows have gone through a full redevelopment once I understand them; I don't think this one will do that because I want it to come out raw - and I want to release these songs as soon as possible as my Chase! project has become a behemoth that is gonna just come out... whenever it eventually comes out.
Lots of fringe shows change over time, as folks hone-in on themes and beta-test ideas on the road. But this version of it, right now... this is probably the best version of it. This is the version where you're gonna see the emotional wounds before they scab over.
It sounds like it's a heavy show, but it's really not - it's possibly my funniest show to date. It'd mean a lot to me if you came out to see it, especially during the week as it's a tough sell at 9:40pm - there's some sales for every night so nobody is gonna have a "two people in a room with Tomás Ford" experience on this one, so it's pretty low risk on that front.
But yeah - this is a SCARY show to be debuting. I'm freaking out a little. Pretty sure folks will dig it. But I've never put myself out there in this way before.
You can book tickets here - I've also got my CRAP MUSIC RAVE PARTY running at the Fringe - this saturday in freo and then at the end of the festival in the city. Info on those big mega partiez are here.
(I'm DJ'ing at Bunbury Fringe's opening on friday evening, too, so if you're down that way, stop by - hell, if you're not, make a weekend road trip, it is SUCH A GREAT FESTIVAL).
