In Conversation with the Deadmouse Team | The Deadmouse and Peabrain Dreams

In this week's backstage blog, we spoke to Alana Louise (actor and writer) Sarah Palmieri (actor) Jason Schwab (actor) Joe Kenny (actor) and Nina Hopley (producer) from the Deadmouse and Peabrain Dreams team, hearing all about the process as they prepare to bring their show to Explosives Factory next week!

Dad’s a priest. Mum never came back from Bali. And all you want to do is win the bleeping X-Factor. Meet Shannon and Jodi – sisters, funeral directors and experts at burying shit. Stuck in Dumbfordton, a small town with a population of 338 and dropping, they share an all-consuming mission: to win The X-Factor. Buried in local funerals, family drama and each other's hopes and fears, their story explores the lengths we’ll go to escape small-town life — and what happens when our dreams crash headlong into reality.

Q: Small town funeral director sisters trying to win the X factor... is there any of your own lived experience wrapped up in these characters? Where'd the idea come from?

Alana: They’re pretty fictional characters, but I’ve based them on the town where my grandma lives in the UK. There's one bus and it comes every two hours, so it's a pretty isolated place. I spent a lot of time there - probably longer than I wanted to be - and Dumbforton is very much inspired by that town.

My sister and I used to watch The X Factor growing up. Every single Saturday night we’d sit in the living room and eat a Chinese takeaway in front of the TV - it was such a treat. I remember sprinting home before it started, it was a big deal. I was very invested.

Q: Reviewers say that The Deadmouse and Peabrain Dreams is "guaranteed to produce much laughter and perhaps one single tear". When the bows are done and the house lights come up, what feeling do you hope will linger in your audience?

Jason: The way the play has developed is really an exploration of grief and how we move through it. It’s a mash-up of many different things - it starts out zany, ridiculous and out-of-this-world and then kind of sucker-punches you in the middle, where you realise, oh, this is what this is about.

We’ve all lost somebody and all of us are going to lose somebody really important in our lives; that’s a big connecting thread through all of our lived experiences, no matter who you are. So I think it’s a really cool - and unexpectedly deep - exploration of grief. At least, I hope it comes across that way, or lets people think about it like that.

Nina: I hope the audience feels they’ve been taken on a journey - one where grief isn’t only sad. There are moments where it can bring you closer to your loved ones, where you learn more about yourself and where you can still laugh when times get tough. And then there are days where you can’t laugh at all. I’d like to think these characters carry the audience through that whole process and that people leave recognising their own real-life resilience when they’ve been thrown into the messiness of grief.

Q: The Deadmouse and Peabrain Dreams has had a few lives before this, could you catch us up on where this shows been up until now?

Sarah: It all began in Étampes, France - this gorgeous arena of clowns where Alana was studying. I was in Australia at the time and Alana called me and said, “Mate, listen. I’ve written us a play. You’ve got to move to Paris and we’ll put it on.” So I flew over and quickly realised Étampes is not Paris at all.

Joe: It's Paris from Temu.

Sarah: But that’s where we started putting it all together. Then we had our premier in the center of Paris, in a pub. After that, we took her to London, to Camden’s Peoples Theatre, then to Edinburgh for the Festival Fringe, and now she’s here in Melbourne.

Joe: In two weeks’ time, when we put this show on, we’ll have performed it across four different countries and two different continents, which is kinda cool.

Q: What will surprise audiences about this work?

Alana: We’re all very good friends. Sarah and I have known each other since high school, Joe’s my partner and Jason and Nina I met at clown school. I think our chemistry on stage will be really surprising.

In clown school, we learned about a term called complicité - it’s the electricity between two people on stage. I think we have that between all of us in such abundance and it feels really special how that translates into the work.

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

Jason: We’ve been with this show for a long time now and it’s had many different iterations. The version we’re doing now feels very different to what we did a few months ago in Edinburgh. What’s surprising to me is that we keep finding new things, even after having lived with it for so long.

Nina: Honestly, the whole thing's been memorable. Living together in Edinburgh, all of us crammed into a tiny apartment with no living room, no dining table and a 30 minute bus ride outside of the city. But it was genuinely the best time. We all got on, we all made each other laugh. I think that's another thing that makes every moment so memorable - we’re just always trying to make each other laugh.

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The Deadmouse and Peabrain Dreams plays 12-21 February at Explosives Factory.

Click here to get your tickets!