Noah SkapeNoah Skape manages to transmit dazzling, teeth-flashing energy through a laptop screen on a Zoom call – it is exciting to imagine what he must be capable of onstage.
Luckily, Australian audiences will be given the chance to experience his vigour in person, thanks to his debut Fringe show, Human Entertainment, kicking off at the Blue Room Theatre on January 22nd.
A veteran of the Perth scene, Skape is multi-faceted in his artistry, renowned for his eclectic marriage of punk sounds and avant-garde musical theatre. He has wowed onstage (in productions of Saturday Night Fever and The Wedding Singer), onscreen (in the thriller He Ain’t Heavy and the Western The Furnace) and in the West Australian Music-nominated band, Faim, but it seems that Human Entertainment is shaping up to be the true culmination of his artistic journey so far.
Skape, dressed in a Danny Elfman shirt and accompanied by a framed West Side Story poster, discusses the initial inspiration for the show.
“I’ve been working with my punk band for the last five years, and slowly but surely that’s been progressing into this more theatrical stage show,” says Skape, who doesn’t merely play song after song, but incorporates skits into his setlist too. “The attempt is to build a world. And so, I just want to take that further and further.”
Human Entertainment is being described as “a clown-punk-cabaret collision of absurdity, poignancy, and sheer wow factor.” Using found audio, Skape will weave soundscapes to conjure vivid, theatrical worlds.
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“If it gets enough traction and enough people dig the vibe, the ultimate goal will be to bring in the band, and then it can become even more explosive,” he says.
Human Entertainment will be a one-man show – Skape will be gracing the stage totally alone, an experience he describes as simultaneously liberating and scary.
“It’s liberating in that there’s a lot more stage to use, and it’s scary in that there are fewer distractions,” he says. “I’m fairly confident onstage that I can capture people’s attention, but this is going to be the real test.”
He adds that focusing on the endless logistical administration leading up to the show’s debut has been “a good distraction from the nerves.”
However, given that the opening of the show is now a hand’s breadth away, the nerves are truly starting to settle in. “But you don’t put on a good show unless you’re nervous, and I firmly believe that,” he says. “It means you care, it means you’re focused. And some of that nervous energy turns into cool ideas in the moment.”
The marriage of punk and musical theatre as genres – though odd to some – is “natural” for Skape. “I grew up with musical theatre. I grew up in that world.”
As a child in small town WA, the local community theatre was a mammoth part of his existence.
“That was my life and I loved it, and then I turned fourteen and I found my dad’s Ramones CD.” His glittering eyes expand to the size of dinner plates. “And then I realised what my world was really supposed to be.”
The energy and angst of punk was especially appealing to him amidst the turbulence of being a teenager.
“The point of a joke is to make someone laugh. The point of a meal is to make someone full or make their tongue come alive,” he explains. “I like to think that the point of a song is to elicit strong emotional reactions.
“And the best emotional reactions I get are equally from big Broadway belters or two and a half minute punk-rock songs. And that’s the recipe base of what I’m trying to do, is elicit an emotional response from blending those two things.”
The idea to utilise found audio in Human Entertainment came to him after spending some time working on collage art, a pursuit inspired by his admiration of Winston Smith.
“It’s all about repurposing things that are supposed to have one context, and then putting them in another context and seeing how it can have a new life.” One day he thought to himself, what if he could take collage art one step further and create “a theatrical collage experience?”
Many artists struggle with the possibility that no new ideas exist. Skape’s response was to “use old ideas and repurpose them.”
This is his debut into the Fringe World – a step he has been looking forward to for ages. He is especially thankful to Blue Room Theatre in Perth in Northridge and their ‘Summer Nights’ series for allowing him the opportunity. He calls ‘Summer Nights’ an “institution” of creativity and discovery.
Perth is often considered, rightly or wrongly, a culturally isolated city, but Skape is invigorated by the art he is seeing being produced around him, largely characterised by a “ferocious underdog” mindset.
He mentions Saturday Night Fever: The Musical, originally a Perth production, being taken to Melbourne, and the major reception it is enjoying. “They’re killing it. People are seeing it and going, ‘Wow, this is happening in Perth?’” It is a legacy he is proud to be involved in.
As he takes his foal steps into the world of Fringe, he is constantly drawing from those around him.
“Producing a show is all about learning,” he says.
Skape views his artistic career as occurring in phases of “input and output.” It is important, he says, to allow himself to have meaningful periods of input, which, for him, can be as simple as walking around the CBD in Perth and finding inspiration in the goings-on around him. Writing is where he experiences peak catharsis; performing is all about getting the job done.
Performing is a job, but it is still an overwhelming corporeal experience. “I guess there is a sense of transcendence,” he says. “There's a huge sense of physicality in my work.”
For Human Entertainment, Skape is working with a choreographer called Aleina "Fusslenose" Humphreys, whom he exhibits nothing but the utmost admiration for.
“They’re a local drag and burlesque performer, classically trained, with a huge repertoire, and right now they’re just doing ‘scungy’ pub shows,” he explains. “Perth doesn’t know how lucky it is!’
His praise for Fusselnose is testament to the fact that it truly takes a village to put on something as spectacular as a Fringe Show, an exhausting, overwhelming, but ultimately fulfilling process.
“Fusselnose has really given me the confidence to be more deliberate about the stuff that I’m doing,” he says. His movements used to be raw and animalistic, ruled by attempts to emote as physically as possible. Now, everything is slightly more controlled.
But, crucially, not too controlled. Human Entertainment still offers up fresh feeling and immediate action – it is poised to be another artistic instance of Perth punching above their weight.
Noah Skape is ready for the show to begin.
Noah Skape’s Human Entertainment runs for six nights from January 22nd to 31st. Full performance details and tickets are available via the Fringe World website.
Noah Skape – Human Entertainment
Thursday, January 22nd – The Blue Room Theatre, Perth, WA
Friday, January 23rd – The Blue Room Theatre, Perth, WA
Saturday, January 24th – The Blue Room Theatre, Perth, WA
Thursday, January 29th – The Blue Room Theatre, Perth, WA
Friday, January 30th – The Blue Room Theatre, Perth, WA
Saturday, January 31st– The Blue Room Theatre, Perth, WA
This piece of content has been assisted by the Australian Government through Music Australia and Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body
