In Conversation with Hugo Gutteridge and Gabrielle Ward | KATZENMUSIK
- May 16
- 4 min read
In this week's Backstage Blog, things got got all-too-honest with Hugo Gutteridge and Gabrielle Ward, two of the actors in KATZENMUSIK - the anti-landlord punk-rock black comedy Paracosm is bringing to Explosives Factory in two weeks time!
It's Dionysus meets the housing crisis! From the company that brought you BLACKPILL. ★★★★★, Paracosm has reimagined Katzenmusik into an explosive new piece of radical punk-rock political theatre bound to put the metaphorical middle finger to your landlord this June. A viral video, a company capitalising on fear, prank calls, class divide and a cat memorial. The increasing income gap between rich and poor has pushed the residents of Burnside Town to breaking point. Katzenmusik champions the experience of those constantly bending over backwards to please a landlord who treats them like shit, keeping peace with an underqualified boss and trying not to think about the fact that their life basically amounts to transferring wealth from one of them to the other. Hate your landlord? See this show!
Q: Welcome to Theatre Works! How have rehearsals been going? What does a night with the cast of Katzenmusik look like?
HUGO: Thank you! I honestly have spent the last few months looking forward to every Sunday and Monday. Working with such hilarious and talented performers and creatives has been such an bloody pleasure. Plus they are pretty nice people too I guess. Your average night of Katzen-moving (HA!) goes like this. we arrive, Gab plays a disco classic and gets our bodies moving, then we all sacrifice the cat we caught that day and Chris bathes in its blood. then we run through each act and get the feel of the scenes and our bodies in space. Then the voices start, and I wake up at 3am in a body of water.
Q: How did you break the news to Charlie and Glen that you were starring in a show about cat murder?
GAB: I told them over dinner which definitely helped. It was a very difficult conversation for me but they actually didn’t bat an eye. (I think it was the tuna). But deep down I can tell they’re plotting their revenge. My days are numbered to say the least…
Q: For readers of the Theatre Works blog to whom the connection between hating your landlord and mass feline homicide is unclear, how would you describe their intersection in this show?
HUGO: Consider the small pussy cat playing with a ball of yarn. This majestic creature batters the yarn around with the innocence of the natural world, completely uncaring of the yarns feelings. perhaps, unaware that the yarn even has feelings. The yarn is purely for it's amusement, and pleasure, it owns the yarn. Now imagine that pussy cat is a landlord, and the ball of yarn is you. kill the cat which is your landlord, use that string to garrotte your cat lord baby.
Q: Across the seven actors in this show, we see 77 roles. How do you go about navigating a show usually performed by a cast of at least twenty between only the seven of you?
GAB: It’s definitely a beast, but working with Chris and this insanely talented cast has made the process feel very effortless. There is such a lovely sense of play that exists in our rehearsal room and among the cast; it almost forces me to stay completely in each character and in each moment, because you never know what brilliant thing might be thrown your way at any given time. So that has definitely helped! (That alongside Chris whispering lines into my in-ears, of course.)
Q: What will surprise audiences about this work?
HUGO: That even though there are 77 characters, you will genuinely feel for every one. even some of the smaller roles or characters with one line are really impactful narratively, or just for the comedy and flow of the play. The writing, alongside Chris's expert fine tuning and big braining, has built a really believable world full of engaging and distinct voices.
GAB: What will surprise audiences most is how deeply invested they’ll become in every single character, despite the story being told by such a small cast. Chris has done a masterful job balancing the tempo; the pacing is fast and continuously engaging, yet it miraculously slows down exactly when it needs to, giving the audience the breathing room to genuinely connect with everyone inhabiting this world
Q: What has been the most memorable moment of the process so far?
HUGO: I can't think of one moment but I feel that the thing I will remember the most about the process is how gods damn funny everyone is, the wit and the energy of everyone involved in the project is something for the books, and I looked forward to it every week. That and the secret things, the things we did that Chris told us we can never tell another soul, those memorable things, them I will take to the grave.
GAB: I'm with Hugo, it has to be the sheer amount of laughter in the room. I guess the nature of doing a black comedy has brought together a cast that is just so incredibly quick; we constantly stall rehearsals trying to stop laughing at someone’s sheer brilliance in a scene. The most memorable visual, however, has to be from our first full costume run, and the absolute graveyard of props and costumes left side-stage as a result of seven people sprinting to make their 23rd character. Absolute chaos… it’s so much fun. We were also visited in rehearsals by the icon herself—a neighborhood cat called Regina. Very on brand.
Katzenmusik plays at Explosives Factory 3 - 13 June. If you hate your landlord, click below to get your tickets!
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