In Conversation with Geraldine Cutler | BEASTS

In today's Backstage Blog, we sat down with Geraldine Cutler, one of the performers deep into rehearsals of Persona Collective's BEASTS, which opens May 6 at Explosives Factory.

A deranged farce where fragile egos descend into a hellish manosphere wrapped in  physical theatre and poetic prose. A group of dejected young men turn to the dark corners of the internet to restore their self-imposed “virtue”, striking a Faustian deal with the gruesome personification of masculinity: Alpha, to give them back the world they believe they are owed. But, in their quest for the perfect masculine ideal these fragile boys will contend with a gruesome transformation into something else entirely… Robert Lewis’ wickedly intelligent writing comes to a climax in Beasts, tackling the complex topic of toxic masculinity and its roots in online discourse. Irreverent, experimental and freaky performances directed by emerging artist Callum Bodman bring a chaotic and archaic world to life in all its janky glory.

Q: Welcome to Theatre Works! How is the show shaping up in the lead up to the season?

Thank you, it’s fantastic to be here!

We’re currently in the thick of shaping and refining the show, and counting down the days until opening night with excitement and a healthy dose of nervous anticipation. Inside the rehearsal space we’ve been experimenting and pushing the stylistic bounds of our previous run of Beasts, and outside rehearsals, I’ve been busy being gobsmacked by each new development in the show’s design elements.

Q: This isn’t the first time you’ve put this show on - tell us about the journey Beasts has taken to get here. How has the show evolved over time?

Well, for starters, we have made the very prestigious upgrade from developing and rehearsing an entire show in our living room, to now hiring an actual rehearsal space. But that’s enough bragging.

In our first run of Beasts we were limited to a one-hour time slot, so we had the same script, but had to be quite brutal in cutting scenes that didn’t directly progress the story. The show is already fast paced, but it was even more so because we had to squeeze it all into this little window of time so the show was this wild, in-your-face barrage of words and movement that kept the audience on their toes the whole time. But now, we have 90 glorious minutes, so we’re able to bring back so much of Robert Lewis’ brilliant writing. It’s been so fun working with Callum Bodman’s dazzlingly devilish direction to really flesh out the scenes we kept and amp it up even more with the scenes we’re performing for the first time.

As well as a bigger show, our incredible Production Designer George Mason has been in full swing injecting more visual beastly goodness into the set, props, lighting and costumes, and the whole show is now soundtracked by the stunning original compositions of John Sharp.

So we’ve got more story, more life, more set, more sound. More Beasts.

Q: For people familiar with The Persona Collective, do you think they’ll find this work similar to your style so far? In what ways does it differ?

Most of the shows we’ve performed in Melbourne have been written by Robert Lewis and form an anthology of works delving into human experiences in the same spontaneous, playful-yet-unafraid style. Recent Persona Collective shows aside from Beasts have been Crows, which was another series revolving around themes of toxic masculinity, and Scarabs, which was a kaleidoscopic journey exploring cultural displacement.

Beasts is much more of a farce than our last two performances, and more pointedly self-aware. On top of this, Beasts is the most elaborately designed show, and certainly the most visually complex. We’re stepping up from the elevated naturalism of Crows and the delicate conceptualism of Scarabs with this show, and twisting it all into an explosion of the grotesque.

Q: What do you think will surprise audiences about this work?

The beasts themselves. The beautifully written prose juxtaposes wildly with the frankly disgusting nature of the beasts, and in the same vein of contrast, the constant tonal shifts can be very whiplash-inducing. You’re never going to know what’s coming next.

Q: What has been the most memorable moment in your process so far?

Coming back to sit in our kitchen for the table read a year since our first Beasts run was a wonderful moment. There’s something really special about that bond that forms during a production. It’s like you form a hivemind of instinct and trust, and as soon as we started to read, that connection came right back with just this shared buzz of excitement fizzing away between us all. We were instantly right back in the Beasts mindset, and ready to get absurd.

---

Click here to get your tickets!