Melbourne Fringe: Shoot From The Hip

"The inspiration was my collection of over 2000 vintage paperback covers, mostly crime fiction, collected and read over the past 20 years. We wanted to bring the lurid cover artwork to life: the tough-jawed men, the seductive women, the knife-in-the-back corpses, along with the punchy book titles and taglines. The collection had already inspired a short animation — Shooting From The Hip — that won People's Choice at the 2003 Darwin Fringe Film Festival. Twelve years later, we're reinterpreting the content for a live performance.

"What make the show different is a bebop jazz soundtrack, composed and played live by a trio of musicians from Melbourne's jazz music scene: Leith Dixon on keyboards, Ivan Rosa on bass and Jon Chidgey on drums. Then there's an original script, loaded with wisecracks, plot twists and sex scenes (well, one sex scene). And then there are animated projections of vintage pulp fiction cover art that spookily mimic the action on stage. So Shoot From The Hip possesses all the features of the genre — a private eye, a femme fatale, charming gangsters, killings and torch songs — with contemporary touches such as complex female characters, post-modern irony and Melbourne jazz."

Rice's company, Always Working Artists, produced Improvilicious: The Improvised Guide To High School, for this year's Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Written by Justin Cheek, Shoot From The Hip stars Ivy "The Woman Of 1000 Voices" Latimer, who was a 2012 RAW Comedy national finalist, Charlie Sturgeon and Cassie Vagliviello.

What: Shoot From The Hip

When & Where: 16 — 25 Sep, The Jury Room, Courthouse Hotel