After our wee chat with Yon we now chat with Scod from Tripod (the grandiloquent wizard with the pointy hat). This much loved Aussie comedy group are back at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, after a three year hiatus, with an epic tale to tell in Tripod Versus the Dragon. Join the party of musical moral mazes battling hot dragons and see Tripod at the Assembly Hall on the Mound from the 5th to the 29th of August at 9.45 pm each evening.
1. What inspired you into the Arts?
I always knew I was different. I think it was the bashings. Received, not administered. For some reason the other kids at school just felt a deep-seated pathological need to oppress me. Of course maybe I was just a swotty twat who needed a good thump. I did spend most of my lunchtimes writing Dungeons and Dragons adventures for submission to Dragon magazine. And I was arrogant. Not sure what I had to be arrogant about. I guess when you’re the second lowest rung on the food chain (the lowest was the kid with the gammy hand) you gotta shore up your position however you can. The kid with the gammy hand went on to become a really good teacher, I hear.
2. What’s your show about and where are you taking your show after the Edinburgh Fringe?
The show is called Tripod versus the Dragon and it’s a musical set inside a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Don’t be intimidated – uncool people are welcome to come along too. Three misfits set out on an adventure and the most misfitty one falls in love with a hot chick who turns out to be a Dragon in disguise. You heard me! Anyhow things go bad then come good again. In song. We’re calling it the Three Stooges meets the Ring Cycle.
In short it’s about being the swotty twat who needed a good thump, and then growing up to be a creative person. See question one!
Edinburgh will be the fifth season of the show after the Adelaide Fringe, the Melbourne Comedy Festival, the Sydney Opera House and the Riverside in London. The theory goes that we’ll know what we’re doing by the time we hit Edinburgh. After that it’s Brisbane, and then, I suppose, Broadway! And a movie! And action figures! And then one day, the ultimate merch item – the 20 sided dice.
3. What are you most proud of?
I should really say “my daughter” here, but she shat me last night. Jesus, Nell, if you’re going to cough up a lung could you have the common decency to do it quietly with the door closed?
I’m also quite proud of having made a living out of the arts for my entire adult life. That’s quite hard to do in Australia, where we have a population of, like, fourteen and a dog. Also I’ve managed to do it without having become a commercial radio nob-end. Why, only now, doing this interview, I am sitting in the window of a cafe with a latte and a laptop. Not a nob-end at all!
4. If you had a chance to work with anyone of your choosing, who would it be?
Well, the first name that leapt into my head was “Spielberg“. I guess because he seems like someone who knows a lot of stuff, and I’d love to have a chance to learn some of that stuff from him.
I’d also love to work with Joss Whedon. Same reasons plus nerdgasm. Are these answers too unrealistic? Ok, let me wind it back a bit. Tim Burton.
Another mini ambition is to be one of the mission designers on World of Warcraft. Also I’d like to write scripts for Home and Away. And I’d love to write songs with Missy Higgins because she is lovely and an awesome songwriter. And I want to write songs for Disney movies.
Stop me anytime here. It’s a pretty long list. Hey, in my game you’ve got to cast a wide net, ambition-wise.
5. What kind of questions do you most like to be asked about your work and why?
That is a very good question which I enjoyed being asked.
I think the first thing you like to hear is that the person interviewing you has actually engaged with what you’re trying to do, done a bit of research, and is trying to get to the bottom of what you’re trying to say as an artist. And is trying to respond as a journalist. As in create some sort of dialogue. That’s just plain flattering. Conversely it’s kind of depressing when an interview starts with “who are you?” I mean, I know everyone’s got a lot on at Fringe time, but, c’mon. Google it on your phone on the way to the interview, at least.
Meanwhile there are the every-interview-ever questions like “how did you guys meet?”. “Where did the name come from” and “who are your influences”. I actually like these ones. In answering, you have to be creative each time inside a very familiar framework. Bit like the blues.
6. Do the reviewers of Fringe shows do a good job?
Being reviewed is a very random event. The stars have to line up. To get a “good” review, you have to make a decent show in the first place, you have to get a reviewer to come at all, and they have to come on a good night, and randomly be the kind of person who would dig your thang, and be in a good mood, and so on, and so on. So when you get a good review it’s like rolling an 18 on three 6-sided dice. It’s mostly luck and a lot of it.
To answer your question: the Fringe has a shitload of shows and also a shitload of reviewers, and the ratio is about the same. A few of them are brilliant, experienced, insightful practitioners. Most of them are keen enthusiasts. Some of them are inept idiots with nothing to say.
7. What do you feel about the current state of Arts funding available?
Look, I’m not sure how it is in the UK, but i have to say in Australia it’s pretty good. Of course I would say that : Tripod versus the Dragon’s UK tour is funded in part by the Australia Council, and its US premiere was courtesy of Arts Victoria. So I’m not in a position to complain. Let’s face it, we’re in a pretty privileged position to be talking about arts funding at all, considering the fact that there’s an apocalypse coming. The idea that the government would give me money to stage a play about Dragons and Warriors… well, it’s pretty ridiculous. Wouldn’t have happened in Wagner’s time. Wait, hang on…
8. Which three famous people would you invite to dinner and why [dead celebrities included]? And what tasty treat would you prepare?
I hear Salman Rushdie is a ripper dinner guest. I was gonna say he should bring his wife Padma Lakshmi (superbabe) but I just Googled it and they’ve broken up. Awkward. She’s single now? Maybe her and not him. Bugger it, I’m inviting both of them and they can sort it out themselves. Anyhow if I get to bring Salman then of course I’d better shoot an invite out to my other favourite writer Charles Dickens. Rushdie and Dickens = Big Laughs after a bottle of vino I reckon. So long as Dickens doesn’t start hitting on Padma and making Salman feel weird.
As far as what I’d serve… well, she’s the host of Top Chef, so maybe I should just sidestep the whole thing and get Fish and Chips and call it “informal”. Then we’d turn the stereo up and start skinning up spliff.
9. What do you do to relax?
I play video games and lots of them. Although if I’m honest I wouldn’t say that exactly helps me “relax”. Unless you call twitchy muscles, a sore back and tetris vision “relaxing”.
Playing the piano is good for chilling out. Although my two-year old has managed to stuff something into the two most important E keys. Jesus, Nell.
10. What would be your dream come true?
Tripod versus the Dragon opening on Broadway in the same week that the Disney adaptation of Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea opens in cinemas, directed by Peter Jackson, script by Joss Whedon, songs courtesy of Scott Edgar.
Then two months in a row of pure unadulterated guilt-free World of Warcraft.
5. What kind of questions do you most like to be asked about your work and why?
