Betty Grumble returns to Adelaide for the 2017 Adelaide Fringe Festival, as she describes, ‘the delirium of the non-stop art experience that infects artist and punter alike’. With her new show Grumble: Sex Clown Saves The World, Betty is continuing to entertain, push boundaries and leave the audience with memories they won’t want to lose in a hurry.
What draws you as a performer to the Adelaide Fringe and the Garden of Unearthly Delights?
As an ecosexual, getting down in the garden makes me excited to mingle with all the diverse flora and fauna vibrating down there. So many eruptive succulents to see! The theatre is a moist space of creation, the infamous GOUD is a great space for Grumbling as so many little bees buzz towards her lights and end up floating into my show for its sticky bits. Total pollination.
Have you performed at the Adelaide Fringe before?
I have performed at the Adelaide Fringe before. It is always a joy to behold and I love the delirium of the non-stop art experience that infects artist and punter alike. Last year I performed my first solo show which I am bringing back this year – Betty Grumble: Sex Clown Saves The World. I remember the utter mania of assembling the work and presenting it for the first time, the dizzying fear met with the absolutely luscious support of so many like-minded makers that congregate at festivals to re-fuel and display their hearts and souls. The audiences that attend fringe are so diverse and varied that it is a true test of a works ability to speak to many whilst honouring its own unique voice. I think its a kind of magic. Favourite moments include ecstatic post-show dance floor abandon, sensual escapades, mass disturbing of public peace (as perpetrated by re-united show folk) and trips to the ocean as dawn breaks.
Tell us a little about the show you’re bringing to the Adelaide Fringe?
Grumble: Sex Clown Saves The World has been recently performed in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, London & Edinburgh Fringe. It is a show that wants to reject the idea that there is only one way of being. It pushes back with joy angers and colourful excess. The woman body becomes a site for simultaneous celebration and critique. It is kind of autobiographical and kind of metaphorical, a pastiche of shamanic storytelling and stripteases. It’s an unapologetic gesture towards hope for a utopia, of a return to Earth and big hug to GAIA!
“Feminist cabaret of deep disco dissent and ecosexual adventure” – what has been your favourite part of putting Sex Clown Saves the World together?
Doing the show and meeting people afterwards. It is a total pleasure to feel the work land and for the dialogue to open and really touch people. I wish my 16 year-old self could have known this show. It is a way of dealing with grief, of reaching out to other people who feel the same despair, the same hope for radical loves. Connection is my favourite. It’s what art does best. Those connective tissues both of body and spirit.
If there was one central impression you’d want to leave a crowd with, what would it be?
That all pain and all beauty is connected.
Grumble: Sex Clown Saves The World is showing at Studio 7 in the Garden of Unearthly Delights. For more information, head here.
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