Gothenburg Fringe 2024 in review: Freedom of Speech and Marriage of Genres
For the third year in a row, Ceri Taylor is one of our star volunteers at the festival and is catching a variety of performances during the week to compile a series of reviews.
Freedom of Speech by Eliza Jane Schneider
Everybody thinks they are good at impressions. Everyone has a trick they pull out at parties where they pull off the perfect imitation of their friend drunk in a bar, the weird person who tried to flirt with them, or their old teacher back in school who ruled class with an iron fist and always gave bad grades. Games and party tricks are all well and good but voice acting is a talent, and one that takes years to perfect. Of this, there is no better example than Eliza Jane Schneider.
Schneider has been in the voice acting world for over 30 years, her prolific career includes credits such as South Park, Assassin’s Creed, and as Keira Knightly for a Pirates of the Caribbean video game when Keira Knightly wasn’t there. Schnider brings her one woman show Freedom of Speech to the Gothenburg Fringe Festival, and she takes us on a journey across the USA with nothing but herself, a tape recorder, and an old repurposed ambulance.
Schneider uses the real clips from her tape recorder in the show and continues to recite the clips verbatim in the style of the interviewee. It is easy to forget that these are not just characters, they are real people who Schneider met and talked to, who took her dancing and gave her hot tea. And it is the real stories of the real people that are being told. When the meth-head and his timid girlfriend accepted that they didn’t see a life without drugs. When the girl smoking a cigarette on the balcony spoke candidly about her sexual assault and vowed to kill her rapist if he ever got out of jail. The versatility of the stories captured on tape is astounding and Schnider plays each one so brilliantly it’s easy to forget this is not a full cast of actors - it really is just the same person who has a gift for emulating the human experience.
Performing a one-woman show for ninety minutes is an achievement in itself, but Schneider includes live performances of guitar, violin and an operatic singing voice alongside her impressions. The people of the USA and indeed the people of the world is what brings this show to life. As the elusive white buffalo will tell you: it’s not about the belief, baby. It’s about the believers.
Marriage of Genres by Impram
Attending a preview night for the Gothenburg Fringe Festival is always hard. You come away bursting with inspiration and pencil scratchings all over your complimentary programme, but with the bittersweet wish that there were two of you, so you could see all the shows Gothenburg fringe has to offer. The preview night for the ninth edition of Gothenburg Fringe was no exception, with 200 events across the ten-day festival, choices are hard and they get harder every year.
The first show to kick off my Gothenburg fringe festival found me back in the eclectic throes of 2Lang, boxed in by flamboyant costumes and paintings of Adam and Eve in the nude. I sat down with some dirty nachos and a glass of cider to watch improvisation comedy group Impram perform their show Marriage of Genres - which is exactly as it seems.
Marriage of Genres is performed twice across the ten-day festival, but you could attend both of them and still be entertained. The show is different every time as you - the audience - make the show. Four popular genres are presented up on stage and the top two become the theme of the night’s show. For me, it was horror combined with fairytale, but you might see comedy and slasher, romantic comedy and film noir, or action and anime. The possibilities are endless.
From then on it is over to the actors - no script, no cue lines, not even any prior knowledge of what type of play we were going to pick for them. Just raw acting, on the fly with only each other to bounce off of. To hold the attention of the audience for the entirety of the one-hour show is no mean feat, especially when the overall objective is to be funny! Impram’s first show of the Gothenburg Fringe Festival was a roaring success. There’s no telling what will happen next time on 8 September at Dice Theater.
Gothenburg Fringe 2024 runs from 30 August until 8 September. Get your tickets on gbgfringe.com.
Comments