The Camden Fringe is almost upon us, providing one of the best times in the capital to get into Fringe theatre, and the stories it can tell. To get prepared for the festival, Read About Stuff is running a ‘Five From The Fringe’ interview series, where creative teams answer five questions about their upcoming Festival shows.
In this interview, I chat to Our Oyster Art Collective about their new show You Smell Like A Cat Under The Sun.
Can you tell me a little about your show and what audiences can expect?
Our main character Min works in a perfume shop. Her life is full of repetition and numbness, her world growing thinner and more tasteless every day, like a bowl of wartime soup stretched thin beneath the drone of German planes overhead.
One day she suddenly noticed that everyone in front of her had the same face. This strange face blindness has got her into quite a few awkward and hilarious mix-ups while she interacts with her co-workers and customers…
This show portrays the journey of A girl finding her way back from dissociation, but in a funny way. Our show has a very long name, it’s called You Smell Like a Cat Under the Sun, as you might sense from the title, our production uses smell as one of its storytelling languages. We also use live music, trying to give the audience a unique, immersive sensory experience.
What drew you to this specific story, and why does it belong at the Camden Fringe?
I’m not Min, but I’ve lived through her emotional journey. Facing past trauma and your own inner self is not easy, and I used to wrap my pain in playful jokes the same way Min does. At the same time, I’ve gone through many cycles of moving from dissociation back into really sensing the real world. Dissociation is a way of protecting myself that I feel grateful for and also frustrated by, it pulls all the air out of the room and leaves you living in a vacuum, where everything looks like it’s functioning but is actually out of place.
Also, I once had a friend who worked as a salesperson in a perfume shop in London, and she told me a lot of fun facts about it. I realized that being a perfume salesperson requires a very sharp sense of perception, and if a character is dissociating while also being a perfume salesperson, there is a lot of interesting comedic potential from a playwriting perspective, a fun way to show how her world shifts and changes while she’s dissociating.
This story is set in London, and Min, Alex and Denise all carry traces of friends I’ve met here in the past. Its first ever staging had to be in London. Camden Fringe suits it well, because it’s a space that supports risk taking and supports intimate work.
What has been the biggest challenge in bringing this production to life?
Time and money.
How does the design of your show (set, sound, or lighting) impact the presentation of your story?
This is an intimate story, so we’re trying to use every element we have to explore and present Min’s inner world. Another friend of mine who worked in a perfume shop once told me that perfume tells its own story, and that’s part of why we chose scent as one of our storytelling languages. Audiences can sense, through smell, live music, and visuals, how Min’s world gradually shifts from flat and colourless into something richer and more vivid.
If you could sum up the show in one word or phrase, what would it be and why?
A story of jumping in the river again.
Come and watch our show and you’ll figure it out.
You Smell Like a Cat Under the Sun runs at Rosemary Branch Theatre 16 – 20 August. Tickets are available here: https://camdenfringe.com/events/you-smell-like-a-cat-under-the-sun/
