She's the cat's meow
Meow
Meow’s latest show, which played at the 2008 Sydney Festival,
is called Insert the Name of the Person You Love. When
the international cabaret star read an article about the time
it takes to fall in love, her feline curiosity was piqued by the
idea of science quantifying something as intangible love.
“I’m a deeply romantic and tragic girl,
so I’m quite fascinated with the whole science of it.”
While on tour in Portland Oregon, she discovered one of the scientists
interviewed for the article lived there. So she contacted him
and ended up filming him. She’s also researched mating rituals
“quite intensely in my own particular way”. When I
talked to her, Meow Meow was in Melbourne, asking people what
sound they thought a broken heart makes. “So many people
said silence - more like an implosion than explosion.”
If you’ve seen Meow Meow perform then you
know silence isn’t her forte. Meow Meow calls herself the
“Mother Courage of performance art” and says she’s
“pretty mad” on stage. She describes her new act as
“an exploration of love and then it collides with science”.
Exploring that dynamic is done by “literally throwing myself
around the crowd. Because that’s just healthy. And educational!”
Meow Meow describes her style as kamikaze punk cabaret,
but says Insert the Name of the Person You Love will be more deconstructed
performance art. She’s lived and performed all over the
world, speaks fluent French and German and a smattering of Mandrain,
Cantonese, Polish Italian and Spanish. She’ll often sing
in a variety of languages during the same song. Her extraordinary
voice control is the product of training as an opera singer and
her ease on stage the result of performing from a young age.
The Pilgrim Theatre, or her “glamorous laboratory”
as she calls it, is an intimate space which could “explode
with my enormous presence.” The details of this explosion
are sketchy, but Meow Meow promised lots of fishnets, sequins,
politics, multi-media and medieval love poetry mixed with good
old punk rock. “Toss in a bit of Radiohead and dancing boys
and it’s a cocktail of heaven!” she purrs.
And don’t forget the audience participation.
Meow Meow has been known to use male audience members as microphone
stands. She’s been undressed on stage and In New York she
dipped a naked breast into a glass of wine. So be warned –
a night out with Meow Meow could get up close and personal. “[The
Pilgrim Theatre] is quite intimate so I can really get into people
and on top of them. I just can’t help myself!”
All this, along with a liberal dash of humour. “I
really like people to laugh a lot in the shows. I don’t
want them to be horrified. It’s not supposed to be frightening.”
Philippa Wherrett
