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Saturday, March 30, 2013
Slow Clap News
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Volunteers Wanted: Slow Clap Art Exhibition
| WHAT: We are looking for volunteers to form part of a secret art work at our upcoming exhibition ‘No-One is Not A Joke’ at Kings ARI. Volunteers will be required to invigilate the space and will be given some basic theatrical directions to follow. The shift is 3 and a half hours and we will provide light refreshments. We are happy to provide volunteers with references after the event. If you are available please book in via trybookings.
WHEN: November 12th, 5.30pm - 9pm
About the Exhibition: This exhibition/performance/joke playfully explores and celebrates The Ridiculous. Gleefully subversive, No-One is Not A Joke pays tribute to the comic potential of human endeavour. In this alternative universe the mundane becomes euphoric, work becomes a game and performance becomes even more ridiculous than performance usually is.
In their first foray into visual art, comedic experimentalists Slow Clap take a break from making arty funny to make funny art. At the intersection of performance art, installation and practical joke, Slow Clap use people as their medium, dropping participants into the space between art and comedy.
Putting the mental in experimental, No-One is Not a Joke is an immersive art experience tailored by Slow Clap for your a and b musement.
About Slow Clap: Slow Clap is a collaboration between Melbourne-based artists Vachel Spirason and Stephanie Brotchie.
Since 2010 experimental comedy/theatre makers Slow Clap have established a cult following with two multi-award winning independent productions, ‘The Hermitude of Angus, Ecstatic’ and ‘Truth’. Both toured extensively nationally and internationally, winning several awards including Best Comedy at the Melbourne Fringe Festival, the 2010 Brisbane Powerhouse Comedy Award and Best Comedy at the Auckland Fringe. They were highly commended this year for the John Chataway Innovation Award and have been twice nominated for Best Emerging Comedy at the Adelaide Fringe as well as the Edinburgh Underbelly Award. Their work is physical, genre-bending, smart and all kinds of stupid.
VENUE:
Kings ARI
Lvl 1 / 171 King St Melbourne, Victoria 3000
CONTACT DETAILS: Steph at Slow Clap Productions slowclapproductions@gmail.com More about us:http://slowclapproductions.blogspot.com
To volunteer via trybookings, click here.
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No-One is Not A Joke: A Slow Clap Art Exhibition
FLASH NIGHT – 12TH NOVEMBER 2012
No-one is Not a Joke
Slow Clap (Vachel Spirason and Stephanie Brotchie)
Slow Clap (Vachel Spirason and Stephanie Brotchie)
This exhibition/performance/joke playfully explores and celebrates The Ridiculous. Gleefully subversive, No-One is Not A Joke pays tribute to the comic potential of human endeavour. In this alternative universe the mundane becomes euphoric, work becomes a game and performance becomes even more ridiculous than performance usually is.
In their first foray into visual art, comedic experimentalists Slow Clap take a break from making arty funny to make funny art. At the intersection of performance art, installation and practical joke, Slow Clap use people as their medium, dropping participants into the space between art and comedy.
Putting the mental in experimental, No-One is Not a Joke is an immersive art experience tailored by Slow Clap for your a and b musement.
Slow Clap is a collaboration between Melbourne-based artists Vachel Spirason and Stephanie Brotchie.
Since 2010 experimental comedy/theatre makers Slow Clap have established a cult following with two multi-award winning independent productions, ‘The Hermitude of Angus, Ecstatic’ and ‘Truth’. Both toured extensively nationally and internationally, winning several awards including Best Comedy at the Melbourne Fringe Festival, the 2010 Brisbane Powerhouse Comedy Award and Best Comedy at the Auckland Fringe. They were highly commended this year for the John Chataway Innovation Award and have been twice nominated for Best Emerging Comedy at the Adelaide Fringe as well as the Edinburgh Underbelly Award. Their work is physical, genre-bending, smart and all kinds of stupid.
http://www.kingsartistrun.com.au/kingsartistrun/upcoming/
Truth or Daring Comedy
Truth or Daring Comedy from basil curtis on Vimeo.
Check out the sweet video piece Basil Gerard made about Slow Clap!
Check out the sweet video piece Basil Gerard made about Slow Clap!
Funny Review of Slow Clap's Truth from Lot's Wife
Thomas: Mell said you or I have to do a review on Fringe…
Basil: We could hold hands and write it together?
T: We’re both writers.
B: Yeah we are, lock us up. We’re writers you know, we tell stories.
T: “Put bulldog clips on my nipples, I’m a storyteller.”
B: “Put Jumper leads on my testes, I’m a storyteller.”
T: “Choke me with a dish cloth, I’m a storyteller.”
B: “Play Carly Rae Jepson on loop, I’m a storyteller”
T: One of the best jokes of Fringe.
B: From the best SHOW at Fringe!
T: Yeah no one is going to have any idea what we were talking about
B: Well it makes sense and is pretty damn funny if you’ve seen Truth.
T: Okay. Well let’s tell the people why. You Start.
B: Slow Clap productions is Vachel Spirason and Stephanie Brotchie. This Melbourne Fringe Festival they performed their second one man show, Truth. Loosely a follow on from their multi-many-numerous-several-various-award winning Melbourne International Comedy Festival show ‘The Hermitude of Angus, Estatic’, this show is an hour of ridiculous story telling and even more ridiculously ridiculous dancing.
T: Vachel as the sole man on stage (with some hidden backstage assistance from Stephanie) manages to cram in a host of colourful and crazy characters, which have a way of genuinely connecting with the audience whilst keeping everyone in stitches. Of special note from the ensemble constructed by Vachel is the very intense Juan from Spain, an erotic back up dancer for Salt ‘N’ Peppa and loose form of Vachel himself serving as the central narrator.
B: Barack Obama and George Clooney did not attend the show that we viewed, much to one of the character’s dismay.
T: But it was George and Barack that lost out because Truth was a crazy ride and proof that the home of high quality independent comedy is still Melbourne.
B: God you’re a good story teller.
T: Punch me through a phonebook, I’m a storyteller.
B: I love you.
T: What?
B: I meant yes you are. Damn you autocorrect!
http://lotswife.com.au/melbourne-fringe-review-truth/
Friday, October 12, 2012
Nelson Mail reviews Slow Clap's Angus, Ecstatic
You see, hear and read all sorts of things doing this job, but last night was the first time I had seen a man make love to a chocolate cake.
I wasn't quite sure how I was going to take Vachel Spirason as Angus, a socially-awkward outcast with mismatched socks.
The promo for Spirason's show, The Hermitude of Angus, Ecstastic, likened him to a modern day Mr Bean, and I have never been much of a fan of Rowan Atkinson's hammy-ness.
I tend to cringe at that sort of awkward humour, and anything that's too silly. I think I probably take life too seriously.
So it was with a bit of trepidation and a glass of wine that I sat down in the second row last night.
Spirason, a lanky Greek-looking fellow, launched straight into his comic routine.
We learnt a lot about Angus, a lonely man - possibly a genius - with very few friends, and some amazing dance moves.
We also met a range of other characters in Angus' life, from the librarian to the squeegee man with a penchant for literature.
We met his older self, his mother, a receptionist, and his evil and moustached alter-ego.
Spirason brought them all to life with amazing facials, different voices, and physical comedy.
My personal highlight was the cake incident, which is apparently what happens when you try and read a book on baking and a raunchy novel at the same time.
Spirason is incredibly clever, absurd, and had me grinning and forgetting the busyness of the working week within minutes.
At the end of the show, Angus gave the audience two options, written on a piece of cardboard: 1) You can leave; 2) You can dance.
And dance they did.
- © Fairfax NZ News
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
4 1/2 Stars from Artshub for Slow Clap's Truth
Truth
As a reviewer, I like to take copious notes. This is lucky, because after I walked out of Slow Clap’s Truth I had a silly smile on my face, and very little recollection of anything that had happened in the previous hour: just a series of improbable freeze-frames in my mind.
I seem to remember, for example, Vachel Spirason throwing a giant sparkly fish at an audience member, but I can’t imagine why anyone would have done that. I have the distinct memory of a pocket built into the crotch of a pair of tighty-whiteys, but maybe I’m making that up. I have a picture of a hysterical and filthy dance routine to Salt ‘n’ Pepa’s ‘Let’s Talk About Sex’, but that would be outrageous. Did it really happen? And why does my stomach hurt from laughing?
In an attempt to describe the indescribable, Truth is the story of a cursed man. Vachel has acquired a cursed plasma ball – given to him in a Woolworth’s freezer bag by a naked man in a clearing on an island in New Zealand, and its mysterious pinky-blue glow causes fits of possession; echoes of other cursed characters, who keep returning to haunt him. Most of them, I am pleased to report, have a wide-ranging, magnificent and exuberant tendency to dance. Vachel himself might be a dancing hallucination of another, infinitely sadder man, stuck wordlessly at home, listening to Lee Hazlewood in a neck brace, hoping to find a friend.
Assisted by the sensuous black-gloved hands of Slow Clap’s other half, co-writer/producer Stephanie Brotchie, Spiraison is firing on all cylinders in this show. His self-interrupting, self-contradictory comedy is as changeable as a Melbourne spring day. This kind of exuberant, brilliantly imaginative, personal, DIY comedy could only happen at a Fringe festival: it’s audience participation whether you like it or not, but it’s very hard to mind being pelted with roses or addressed endlessly by name. Bits of mad, brilliant, inexplicable and unrepeatable theatre are what makes Fringe so great. Reschedule your surgery, cancel your lobster dinner, call off the house party and get to the Lithuanian Club tonight for one of Truth’s last ever shows.
Rating: 4 ½ stars out of 5
Slow Clap present Truth
Written and performed by Vachel Spirason
Written and produced by Stephanie Brotchie Fringe Hub – The Ballroom, Lithuanian Club
28 September – 5 October
Written and performed by Vachel Spirason
Written and produced by Stephanie Brotchie Fringe Hub – The Ballroom, Lithuanian Club
28 September – 5 October
Melbourne Fringe Festival
26 September – 14 October
26 September – 14 October
Great review from Inpress for Slow Clap's Truth
TRUTH
Truth played to sold-out audiences at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival earlier this year before touring to the Edinburgh Fringe. Slow-Clap Productions have brought it back home to Melbourne for a short one-week season. It’s a show that has really found its feet over several seasons. In Truth, co-devised with producer Stephanie Brotchie, Vachel Spirason tells the convoluted story of how he came to be in possession of a strangely powerful plasma globe and his ensuing addiction to its pinky purple strands of light. But this is only the loose frame for a joyfully absurd comedy show that moves between simple story telling, sketch comedy, stand-up and utterly hilarious dance routines. Spirason plays all the characters he meets along the way: Juan the Spanish Ballet dancer, an Eastern European Chess champion who takes the audience through his ‘Chessercise’ routine, a friendless cripple, a sex manic Salt-N-Pepa back up dancer, just to name a few. Spirason is a real comic talent. He’s a wonderful physical comedian who handles the audience with endearing ease. Slow Clap’s The Hermitude Of Angus Ecstatic won best comedy in the Melbourne Fringe 2010. This is another work of outstanding physical comedy.
Running at The Lithuanian Club Ballroom until Friday 5 October
Oliver Coleman
Lovely Beat Review for Slow Clap's Truth
Truth
Nick Mason 1 0
The team from Slow Clap are back, presenting quirky, schizophrenic comedy at its finest. Truth, a sold-out sensation at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, looks poised to conquer this year's Melbourne Fringe Festival.
But where to even begin? Dissecting Truth for review is the epitome of a writer’s nightmare: say too little and you’ve not awarded the show due praise. Conversely, too much said about Truth serves to spoil its strangeness and charm. Vachel Spirason tells the tale of a chance meeting, its maddening repercussions revealed over the course of a comprehensive hour. An elastic and super-charismatic performer, Spirason assumes an eccentric array of characters to piece the entire picture together. Rarely is a second of the show wasted, a crazed Spirason rigorously switching between personas, feverishly teasing the audience with the truth of the very world he’s constructed.
Truth is a wonderfully imaginative show. It’s fun for its sense of fantasy, electrifying for Spirason’s sheer stage intensity and even, at times, slightly unnerving. To see this show is to find yourself swept up in the pursuit of answers, such is the beguiling power of both Spirason’s performance and the mind bending mystery presented. Fear not, though, Truth isn’t entirely cerebral: it’s also a masterclass in flamboyant physical comedy, Spirason recalling the likes of Frank Woodley.
Overall, Slow Clap have produced an intricate and exhilarating hour of offbeat comedy. Perhaps it’s acquired taste in some respects - best described as eccentric - but if there’s one thing you should take a chance on this Fringe Festival, it’s got to be Truth.
Truth is a wonderfully imaginative show. It’s fun for its sense of fantasy, electrifying for Spirason’s sheer stage intensity and even, at times, slightly unnerving. To see this show is to find yourself swept up in the pursuit of answers, such is the beguiling power of both Spirason’s performance and the mind bending mystery presented. Fear not, though, Truth isn’t entirely cerebral: it’s also a masterclass in flamboyant physical comedy, Spirason recalling the likes of Frank Woodley.
Overall, Slow Clap have produced an intricate and exhilarating hour of offbeat comedy. Perhaps it’s acquired taste in some respects - best described as eccentric - but if there’s one thing you should take a chance on this Fringe Festival, it’s got to be Truth.
Truth runs until Friday October 5 at the Melbourne Fringe Festival.
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