AN AUDIENCE WITH MEOW MEOW

Commissioned by Berkeley Rep and True Friend Productions  

Written by and starring Meow Meow
Adapted and directed by Emma Rice
Main Season · Roda Theatre
September 5–October 19, 2014

Emma Rice · Adaptor / Director
Tiger Martina · Choreographer
Lance Horne · Music Supervisor / Musical Arrangements
Martin Lowe · Additional Arrangements
Neil Murray · Scenic & Costume Design
Alexander V. Nichols · Lighting Design
Simon Baker · Sound Design
Robert Egan · Dramaturg
Geoff Hoyle · Physical Comedy Consultant
Amy Potozkin · Casting
Michael Suenkel · Stage Manager
Leslie M. Radin · Assistant Stage Manager
Adam L. Sussman · Assistant Director
Carl Pantle · Rehearsal Pianist

Meow Meow · Star
Michael Balderrama · Dancer Sergei Romanov / a Dark Prince of the Stage
Bob Gaynor · Dancer Jonathan Spooner / a Dark Prince of the Stage
Russ Gold · Musician
Lance Horne · Conductor / Musician
Jessica Ivry · Musician
Pat Moran · Musician

“Prepare to have your preconceptions, and your mind, blown away…One of those unique theatrical events that come along all too rarely. This special experience, one truly shared between artist and audience, is love at first sight…A melding of Joan Collins, Lady Gaga, Lucille Ball, and Liza Minnelli on steroids, Meow Meow is as uncategorizable as she is dazzlingly unpredictable…Rarely have I seen a performer connect with an audience on this level.”—Stage and Cinema

International singing sensation and über-comedienne Meow Meow has wowed audiences from the lights of London’s West End to the backrooms of Berlin to the sails of the Sydney Opera House and the opium dens of Shanghai. Now, under the direction of Kneehigh’s Emma Rice (Tristan & Yseult, The Wild Bride), Meow Meow brings her electrifying endowments to our lucky shores. Get ready for a performance of gargantuan proportions. Accompanied by her orchestra and her dancing boys, and accoutered in sequined costumes on spectacular stage sets, Meow Meow will seduce you with her “devilish funny bones and heavenly vocal chords” (London Evening Standard), and reveal how a song and an audience truly can change the world. You are the perfect audience and she is…the extraordinary Meow Meow.

“Ferociously entertaining…This is musical theater as an act of subversion in fishnets and heels…Part burlesque, part Brechtian parable, this 100-minute deconstructed cabaret act—backed by two male dancers and a four-piece band—trades in the explosive nature of the unexpected…Imagine Dame Edna crossed with Hedwig and Ute Lemper in a gleefully bawdy lounge act…There’s no denying the allure of Meow Meow’s purrfectly calibrated diva persona. The Weimar-style vamp-cum-comedian fancies herself the ‘Mother Courage of performance art.’ Armed with an impressive voice and limber stage antics, she seems to be giving her all to tickle us, and that’s hard to resist.”—San Jose Mercury News / Bay Area New Group

“… a remarkably flexible, full voice and a wide-eyed elfin-vamp persona, Meow Meow seems to specialize in cabaret teetering on the brink of comically self-inflicted disaster…She’s a sexy, long-legged chanteuse…She’s a picture of alluring grace one moment and a klutz clambering up on stage the next, with the funniest way of getting up out of a split that I’ve ever seen…A compelling and uniquely gifted performer!”—San Francisco Chronicle

“90 minutes of increasingly dire wardrobe malfunctions, technical mishaps, injured dancers, fleeing musicians, and a producer who literally pulls the plug. But still the show must go on, happily for us!”—Bay Area Reporter

“Original songs by Iain Grandage, Thomas Lauderdale and Meow Meow are delightful surprises. Just as surprising is how poignant Meow Meow can be. The emotional atmosphere of An Audience turns on a dime. When she sings ‘Be Careful’ by Patty Griffin, this diva can break your heart.”—San Francisco Examiner

“Meow Meow is really something, whether she’s being an adept physical comedian, a post-apocalyptic cabaret star or just an emotionally astute singer standing before a crowd. To be in her audience is to be in for a rich, rambunctious experience.”—Theater Dogs

“She’s bawdy and brash, tender and vulnerable; she’s graceful and klutzy, commanding and helpless. She’s a singer who hits every vocal nuance, whether serious or satiric; a high-energy dancer who could probably double as a contortionist; a comic who draws roars from pratfalls, subtle glances, punchlines and sensuality. She calls herself Meow Meow and—need I say this after that lead-in—she’s wonderful.”—Huffington Post