House of Oz - Bridie Connell Q&A
Bridie Connell is an ARIA Award-winning Australian writer and performer and the creator of Fuccbois: Live in Concert, presented by House of Oz and Soft Tread Enterprises. The high-energy musical comedy follows the world’s biggest fictional boyband as rivalries threaten to derail their final concert, delivering an irreverent satire of toxic dating culture packed with pop songs and choreography.
Please tell us about your show. What can audiences expect when they come to see it?
Kia ora and g’day, FANZA! I’m excited to chat to you, particularly as a dual Kiwi/Aussie - your mission is very close to my heart!
I’m the writer and composer of Fuccbois: Live in Concert, an irreverent comedy pop-concert. Taking aim at toxic dating culture through the lens of the world’s biggest boyband, the show unfolds as a real-time concert and is performed entirely by women and gender-diverse performers. The show has banging songs, fire dance moves, and the atmosphere of a Backstreet Boys-at-their-peak arena show. It’s rowdy, nostalgic, and a whole lot of fun.
What inspired it?
A few years back I encountered a run of fuccbois in my dating life in very quick succession. I was ticked off by enduring some terrible behaviour, but I was also fascinated by the performative nature of the hyper-masculinity I was seeing. Something started to bubble away in my brain and I began writing a few satirical songs about fuccbois.
A while later, I was at a party and over the course of the night I saw a man try the same pick up routine almost word for word on three different women. I thought “wow - this is really rehearsed!” and that was the moment I decided to combine fuccboi behaviour with a boyband concert … leaning into this highly manufactured, rehearsed-within-an-inch-of-its-life genre seemed like the perfect lens for the behaviour I wanted to satirise.
The drag element didn’t come until a bit later in the creative process. There’s some confronting themes in the show and it became apparent that a male cast would change the flavour of the hyper-masculinity I was satirising and hit a bit too close to home! Having women and gender diverse actors play the boyband means we can go a lot darker and punchier with the material.
How does it feel to be performing at Edinburgh Festival Fringe?
Performing at the Edinburgh Fringe has been on the bucket list ever since I attended as a punter back in 2017. I was blown away by the ingenuity and talent that oozed out of every square inch of the city, and I knew I’d love to take part one day. To finally be here with a show and team that I adore - well that’s just a dream come true!
What does it mean to be part of House of Oz this year?
Being part of the House of Oz family is a game changer for our team and show. We’d had Edinburgh Fringe on the vision board as a long-term proposition - never in our wildest dreams did we imagine we’d be able to make it there this year! Thanks to House of Oz we get to share our hard work and creativity on an international stage, and we get to do so with incredible support, resources and the brilliant team at House of Oz. The organisation truly changes the lives of the artists it works with. We’re pinching ourselves!
What does it mean to bring your work to UK audiences?
We’ll be performing at Edinburgh Fringe and then at Soho Theatre in London - both iconic comedy launchpads. To get the chance to perform in these environments means everything to me as a writer and performer. The wonderful thing about the creative arts is that you're not just pushing forward, you're also looking back at a thousand generations of performers before you. You can't be a Kiwi who does musical comedy who goes to Edinburgh without thinking about Flight of the Conchords; you can't be an Australian who performs at the Soho Theatre without feeling like you're in the company of artists like Hannah Gadsby, Steen Raskopolous and Celia Pacquola.
We’re also a little bit nervous - the boyband in the show is British, so we’d better make sure our accents are on point for our UK audiences!
What would you like UK audiences to know about Antipodean arts and culture right now?
I’d love them to know that it’s vibrant, inventive and bloody good. We continue to punch above our weight with the incredible creative talent we have in Aotearoa and Australia. UK audiences are in for a treat with all the amazing Kiwi and Aussie acts heading over to Edinburgh Fringe!
What kind of support do artists need most when bringing work overseas?
In NZ there’s the trope of the number 8 wire mindset - the attitude of resourcefulness and ingenuity that turns limited resources into unlimited creativity. I think Aussies share that attitude too. Australasian artists already create brilliant work, but limited funding and opportunities mean it can be really hard to get things made (or to sustain them). Just imagine what we could do with more funding and networking support to share that brilliant work on a global scale.
On a really practical note, something that takes 30 seconds to do but makes an enormous difference to artists (especially ones who've traveled a long way from home) is to spread the word! If you see a show and you love it, tell people! A tweet or an Insta story or even telling a friend goes a long way, and by doing so you're helping artists build international audiences.
What's next for you after Edinburgh?
In the immediate short term, I plan to drink several glasses of wine and then be asleep for a week. Looking slightly further ahead, we’ll be doing a Sydney season of Fuccbois in October/November. I’d love to bring the show home to NZ at some point, so watch this space. I’m also really looking forward to spending some time on other creative projects that have necessarily been on the backburner - I’m writing a new play and continuing work on a screenplay.