Doing the same thing repeatedly is something that Sarah-Louise Young is not designed to do.
“I would be very mischievous and behave badly.”
The traditional musical theater in which she trained simply was not for her. Instead, she and some colleagues decided to do their own work starting with Cabaret.
“We really didn’t know what we were doing. We just hired a place and said: We can do a show? And those of us, we’re still 20 odd years later, still doing it.”
While she also squeezed in some conventional television and theater performance, she continues to return to solo work – she was touring in Australia with her work by Julie Andrews Julie madly deeply When the idea of a show about the English singer, composer and dancer Kate Bush developed.
“I am really interested in this relationship with an audience and what is possible when there is only one of you and many of them.”
Bush fan, she always wondered how her fans got involved with her music, as she had not performed live 35 years ago.
“It was also born of this desire to explore fans and what it is and what it means and the different ways we know, some people want to sit in their room alone with their earplos and just listen to music. And that’s beautiful. And some people really want to experience music as a community event. What if you can’t do a gig, what do you do?”
Stirring with his collaborator and director Russell Lucas, another Bush fan, they created the concept for the program in 2013. So Bush announced that he was returning to the live performance.
“We decided that we couldn’t do the show. We just thought it would be so horrible if we brought the show out and people thought we were doing it to profit from their return. So heartbroken as theater manufacturers, but thrilled with fans.”
They put the ice show until 2019, when they decided to invigorate. Then Covid-19 got it right.
As soon as they could take the road with the show. So Bush’s Hit 1985 Song Climbing that hill (an agreement with God) was presented on the television program Strange and became viral.
“So we were really blessed, because the show was already fine. But we have this new wave of fans, teenagers, 13 -year -olds coming to the show.”
Existing fans already had many different ways to celebrate the artist, as Wuthering heights days.
“It’s happy, really lovely.”
However, it is quick to point out that there is no bush-almost religious figure for some people.
“We like to call the show” Essence of Kate “. So we took the spirit of your music, your songs.
“And for me, there is only one kate bush. And so if you go to hear kate bush, you can listen to the albums. What i from is sing all the songs in the original Key and People Come Out of the Show and Say, oh my goodness, you sound just like kate bush. Think I Sound Like Me. But there’s Something About Thhose Songs That What You Hear The Beginning of the Track, It Hotwires You Back to the First Time That You Heard That Song. “
She then weaves in these stories of the audience and her favorite songs.
“So, two shows for me are the same. I just made my 300th performance on Saturday and I can honestly say that no show is the same for me, because it’s exclusive to the coming audience.”
Having the participation of the public -a member of the program is what keeps it “infinitely fascinated” with the execution.
So for Young, it’s not really a person’s show.
“It’s really a 200 people show, depending on how many people are on the audience.”
Selecting what the songs was not easy, to help, they did a search on -line asking people what they would like to hear.
“So we put as much as we can, but it was so difficult because she has a lot of songs. We could make a 24 -hour ring cycle of her songs and still have remaining songs.”
Young also had the challenge of learning the letters of Bush.
“I did shows about many different people and learned [Stephen] Sondheim songs and I have singing all my life. But I think learning your songs was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do because she’s not a conventional songwriter.
“Lyically, she plays with patterns, she changes her rhythm. So I found them very difficult to learn, but now I learned them that they are just in my body. But they are vocal assault courses definitely.”
Not being able to speak Russian, learning a song in the language was extremely difficult and took months to master.
“But I think when you extend in these places like an unusual artist, this is an exciting place to be.”
It is also the most demanding program that Young presented itself.
“I’m wondering to be very, very, very physical and very, vocally agile. But I also think it inevitably happens when you do a lot of shows – this is my 17th show. I’m 50 years old this year, so I’m doing theater since I was 21. And I think you inevitably include to more challenging places.
“I want to do work that is nutritious for me and also for an audience. And then I think you gravitates towards things that are more complicated and challenging because you want to grow.”
Looking back, she feels she was destined to do the job – she was the youngest of the five – and, as a result, probably intended to be a little displayed.
“My four older brothers said I sing since I was born, and was incredibly annoying to them.”
She credits her mother for taking her family to the theater when she were children, but this did not happen to young people at that time to make him a profession. Instead, he went to university to study foreign languages and then took a drama course next door.
Living in Bristol with her vibrant art scene, it was not long before she was driving and doing clothes, choreography, performance and writing.
“I kind of ended up doing a solo show when I was 21, which I took to the fringe of Edinburgh and then went to London. And I kind of thought: Oh, that seems to be what I’m doing now.”
Having no training, she decided to study musical theater, but found it was not her.
“Ironically, I ended up doing musicals too – you know that any opportunity to take the stage and introduce me. I think the discovery that doing my own work was really where my heart desire was. It kept me in the industry.”
Young spent 10 years with makeshift musical group showstoppers before her soil work takes off. She started her investigation into fans with the Julie Andrews show, moved to tragic comedy with Je regrette! Playing a dark clown enemy, Edith Piaf and then comedy with the award -winning Cabaret.
Young is also very proud of your show Silent treatment Based on her personal experience of being informed, it would be career suicide to talk about the voice surgery she had. She was losing her voice inside and out since she was at school, but it was not until many years after she was looking for expert help who found she had cysts in her vocal folds that she is believed to have been caused by shouts when sexually assaulted as a child.
“This sent me in this amazing search to know my body. I entered psychotherapy, but I also started to look at physical and incorporated practice.”
It was not up to four years after she decided to have surgery.
“So, ironically, I was doing a show about Julie Andrews, who is famous who lost his voice through the negligence of a voice operation.”
After the surgery, her voice was effortlessly and she wanted to tell the world, but was advised against her administration.
“So I waited a good eight years. I wish I was sure I was in a safe place before making a piece of theater about it. And it’s also a funny piece. It’s full of humor and silly. And my cysts are played by these two giant pink boxing gloves that make a song called Cyst Dance.”
While her solo shows dominate, she still tries to do a joint piece a year to work with other people and “replenish”.
In the heart of all your work is love for people and bringing joy to an audience.
“I think you have to love people to do this work. The program is that they told me, funny and touching. And I think what is usually said, because I always find the audience later, people appear and say, you know, I laughed and cried to the same measure.”
Young calls being a “creative facilitator”.
She is still pinching in the success of the program, but admits that a life in the arts was not easy.
“I did everything a little later. You know, I got married last year. I just bought a house. Many of my friends have been much more established and financially safe for years. So, I had to live like a itinerant menstrel for a long time. And not taking anything as guaranteed, because it could disappear tomorrow.”
Bush never saw the show as much as Young knows, but she expects Bush to love it if she did.
“It’s fun, and it’s playful, and it’s respectful. She would have to be disguised. I think the audience would lose her head. But we had her friends come and see him. One of the original singers of her 1979 tour came. Some cousins arrived, some friends of her son.
Although not everyone was positive about the idea of the program, seeing it as a parasite to do so, your answer is to look at the artist.
“This is a woman who personified a donkey in a haunted house. She laughs at herself too. So, to do something that was just face and serious, it would be to deny half of the material this woman created. She is an actress, she is a comedian. She made videos with the 1980s.”
Young is confident of having done the show of an “authentic love place”.
“There is nothing that is offensive. There are some explicit moments, which I think they are no more explosive than the things she has done.”
Currently, she is in what she calls the “composting” period for a new show, absorbing as much information as possible and letting her brain reflect on this, and direct a show at home.
“I’m never going out, the program takes time and I love my work. But as I get older, I’m also aware of making room for non -working life. I’m away from my husband and my stepchildren and cats for four months. And that’s a long time. So I’m trying to build a little off.”
To see
“A Night Without Kate Bush”, Wānaka Festival of Color, Pacific Crystal Palace, April 1, 20:30; Dunedin Arts Festival, Mayfair Theater, Dunedin from April 3-4, 19:00, Oamaru Opera House April 5, 7:30 pm.
