Surf, Sand And Psycho

Melbourne-based actor and theatre maker Ash Flanders has a big year ahead on Sydney stages. From the end of November, he will take to the stage at Bondi Pavilion as Chicklet, a nerd with dreams to surf and a handful of different personalities in the Stephen Nicolazzo-directed Psycho Beach Party; in March his company with Declan Greene, Sisters Grimm, present their hit Little Mercy at Sydney Theatre Company; and in November 2013 another Sisters Grimm work, Summertime In The Garden Of Eden, graces the stage at SBW Stables.

The unifying thread through all the productions for Flanders – not least of all the psychodrama/beach movie/slasher film parody Psycho Beach Party – is their subversion of filmic genre.

“For me as an actor and as a theatre maker, I can't overstate my love of cinema, and just these narratives that I've grown up with and styles that I absorbed without really realising it. There's a big trend at the moment to do theatre that's based on the sexy, Australian adaptation of a classic text, you know? And I prefer my art to come from a low culture accessible point.

“I don't believe that everyone needs to have read the classics or even needs to see the classics,” reasons Flanders, “I would rather talk about what people are into and what people actually like, you know, the guilty pleasures that we love – that's exciting to me – and it ties into my love of camp and of kitsch and the audacity of praising something that seems glib or supercilious. Make a wild, fun, sexy, funny experience for people in the theatre, which is a big thing for me; I don't like my theatre to be too stuffy or too preachy, I don't want to go to a play about some leftist issue, effectively where they're preaching to the choir because a lot of people coming are already lefties. I'd rather go and see blood, see vomit, see sex, see men in dresses, see things that take me out of my life and take me beyond. I'm so not against a good old fashioned curtain up, razzle dazzle, show must go on, turn step pivot high kick. I love all of that, put on a show! People are paying money, give them a show!”

Psycho Beach Party certainly offers blood, sex, and men in dresses (well, at least Flanders in dresses, and a bikini) in spades as it tells the story of a series of mysterious deaths in a beach-side town populated by surfers, a B-movie actress and the many moods of Flanders' Chicklet.

Once again returning to his love of cinema, Flanders' excitedly rattles off the hit-list of actors inspiring his multifaceted, flat-chested teenage character. “I maybe am quite similar to Charles in the female women of cinema that I idolise and I guess as a lot of gay men do, camp icons of Joan Crawford or Betty Davis, or a sassy black woman, I feel like a lot of gay guys have those voices within them and I'm just getting excited to bring mine out to the forefront and do my terrifying dominatrix Ann Bowman,” says Flanders, seeming more than ready to inhabit Chicklet's sexually aggressive alter-ego.