Q&A: Sleepdogs on A Million Tiny Glitches
We asked Tim and Tanuja from Sleepdogs some questions about their new musical A Million Tiny Glitches.
What made you want to make this show in this form?
Tanuja // Well, sometimes life throws you big emotions, and Tim and I went through a period where we lost 3 close family members within just a few years. So we were sitting in these waves of grief that are very big and difficult to regulate. Songs and music can hold the fullness of that kind of overwhelming emotion really directly. The only way we could begin to express these emotions was by starting with song, so that kind of forced the form.
And Tim's background is being in bands and writing pop songs, so it's not like an alien thing to us, to put songs at the heart of storytelling.
Tim // And pop songs in particular hold emotion in a way that can mean so many different things to so many different people. The lyric especially, even if it's about something quite focused and specific, if you write it in an open enough way, a pop song kind of explodes it even further...
You describe the show as an electronic musical. What makes it a musical?
Tanuja // Well I always thought if a show had songs in it, as part of the storytelling - genuine songs you could sing and that you might take away and listen to - that that would deem the show a musical. Hence, AMTG is a musical. But as we've been trying to build support to make AMTG, I'm learning that "the musical" as a form is policed quite adamantly! I'm learning that there are a lot of people, certainly within the musical theatre sector, who might not consider AMTG a musical, because even though it has songs at the heart of its storytelling, it doesn't have the right type of songs or the right dramaturgical structure to be a "proper" musical.
I wish we didn't have to get caught up in this kind of industry jargon. I think that kind of fixation on defining what is and isn't correct practice really puts the boot into doing anything new. You might get updated versions of the same old same old, but anyone who's coming process or form from a different angle is treated with suspicion by the cognoscenti. It's a frustratingly inward-facing attitude and I don't think it really reflects how open audiences are. We've been calling AMTG a musical because it's built around these songs, so that feels like the most honest way to invite audiences into the show. The song lyrics and music production are really emotionally vibrant - and when we've played demos to people, people find it really moving.
Tim // I think that's why jukebox musicals like Mama Mia hold together for audiences, despite going against so many maxims of 'musical craft' -- the spirit of free expression in a lot of pop lyrics often works out absolutely fine as part of a wider story. So after developing AMTG for a while, between the two of us, we started describing it as a jukebox musical of songs people haven't heard yet. Formally, though... we finished writing the story before the song lyrics were finished, so that claim doesn't completely work.
Of the other available forms, opera doesn't quite work because AMTG isn't entirely sung through; gig theatre doesn't quite work because our show will be intensely theatrical, people will be sat down, there'll be a safe space for them; and 'music theatre' doesn't work because we don't want people constantly asking 'but is it music theatre?' So of all the things that don't really apply, it seems to us that 'a musical' doesn't really apply the least.
What’s your vision for how the show will be staged?
Tanuja // This has to be an outrageously seductively beautiful show! One of the things that really stunned me about working through grief was how heightened things suddenly became - like someone just whacked the contrast dial up or my eyes were too wide open or something. A feeling that everything had gone sort of hyper-vivid. I think there'll be a sense of that colour and saturation in how the show will look visually. I definitely feel like the songs hold that shimmering quality in their synthy, electronica, dream-pop production. (Not sure if Tim would use different words to describe the music...).
Tim // nah that's good
Tanuja // Having all the words projected, as well as sung or spoken, is part of that saturation. I want to create a sense of being swept along inside these unpredictable emotional tides.
Graphic novels are a big influence on how the story is told in terms of the script, and I think that will bleed through into the staging. I've come back to the idea of moving frames that might hold video animations, people, tableaux... like moments of clarity that come together suddenly but slip away or bleach out before you can hold onto them. It's part of the surreality of what happens when the landscape of your life, and your sense of self shifts so dramatically - the most ordinary things can become ridiculous.
There'll be a band on stage, and actors, they'll move between each other. It's a magical space rather than a realistic set. We'll be sat in a theatre, in the dark, and the action will happen on a stage in front of us - but I hope that 'safety' of sitting in the dark, will allow people to open themselves up to the complicated emotions in the story, and that the songs especially will encourage people to reflect on their own experiences in relation to loss.
Tim // I love that description of 'whacking up the contrast' as a metaphor for what grief feels like.
I think that's what I've been doing with the song arrangements. They're often big and shaking and shuddery and, for a story of loss, kind of weirdly euphoric. Raised in the Church of England, I haven't been to many funerals where there's space to stomp and clap and shout and sway, or even just properly sing full-throat and stupid in celebration of a life that's just gone. Some of the tunes try and channel that. Others fall into washed-out sort of in-between spaces that are perhaps more in keeping with how you'd imagine grief to be sung, but in what I hope is a beautiful way. And a lot of the time in AMTG those more introspective songs are sung by the dead, for the living.
Can you describe what the experience will be like for an audience?
Tanuja // Beautiful, surprising - hopefully surprisingly funny - and hopeful. It's definitely going to be a show that is about feelings, rather than intellectual ideas. The story is pretty simple: it's about two friends who lose someone they love; one of them retreats into a fantasy inner world - a city constructed from memories; and the other goes on a quest to bring him back from that world of memories. And of course, it's not that straightforward - grief is not an experience to be "saved" from and life's not about "moving forward" in straight lines.
So the story is about how these two people find ways through that disorientating landscape and find ways to accept the death of their friend and keep living their lives. And on the way they'll meet characters who might be the personification of death, characters who seem like weird, fragmented memory versions of their dead friend, and then there's the band who seem to have a song for each stage of the journey.
It'll be a fantastical journey, with a big, sweeping electronica and dream pop soundtrack, and it takes in a real range of emotions. I hope it'll really invite people to open up and connect with the characters, the songs and the story on an emotional level. Tim and I have been talking a lot recently about what brings us back to theatre making, when we're also developing projects in other forms, like radio or film, which are arguably more popular and wider-reaching. And what brings us back is the collective event - that we're getting involved with this story in amongst a group of other people, often strangers. And with an experience like grief, which can feel very isolating, and which often gets talked about as something to hide or "get over", it feels really important that we create spaces where we can sit with those feelings in public, without shame or embarrassment.
It’s about grief and love. Are there any lols?
Tanuja // Ha ha! I hope so. I don't think it's possible for Tim to write anything that doesn't have a healthy dollop of humour. I find it hard to connect with stuff that is overly earnest, so there'll definitely be jokes. I've of the mindset that it's possible to be both funny and sad, even at the same time.
Tim // It felt, like, bone-shakingly essential to get laughter into a show about loss. I've no doubt even if for some stupid reason I refused to put any into the script, T would have someone walk into a wall at some point cos T will basically grab any opportunity for a bit of all-out slapstick.
Any Other Business: anything else you’d like to add?
Tim // Going back to your last question, where you said "it's about grief and love."... I've started to say AMTG is a show about love, and grief, and songs, with songs about love, and grief, and songs. Does that work?