Interview: Officially Deceased, Hilariously Alive?

Mulch Productions on their genre-bending tragicomedy, Dead and Kicking, at Camden People’s Theatre

In a world where paperwork can dictate reality, Mulch Productions asks ‘what happens when the system declares you dead, even though you’re very much alive?’ in their new show, Dead and Kicking. Inspired by a true story, it delves into a bizarre scenario with a blend of dark humor, original music, and physical theatre.

This ensemble theatre company, comprised of Camilla Anvar, Martha Barnett, Tilly Botsford, Rosa Collier, Larissa Crafford-Lazarus and Ezra Saifie, aims to dismantle traditional theatrical hierarchies to create genre-defying work. Their latest production, developed through improvisation and collaboration, promises to be a thought-provoking and entertaining exploration of bureaucratic absurdity.

Want to know more? So did we, which is why we completed the required paperwork to arrange some time to sit down with the team to ask the all-important questions.

Welcome everyone, so who do we have with us today?

We are Mulch Productions – Camilla Anvar, Martha Barnett, Tilly Botsford, Rosa Collier, Larissa Crafford-Lazarus and Ezra Saifie. We are an ensemble theatre company of multidisciplinary artists, and Dead and Kicking is the first show we are creating together. We formed two years ago at LAMDA and devised the first version as part of our final module before graduating. We hugely enjoyed making this show together, so we’ve continued to develop it, and now we’re getting ready to stage the first full-length version.

Why did you choose Camden People’s Theatre as the venue for this show?

We first performed a work-in-progress version of our show at Camden People’s Theatre as part of their SPRINT festival a year ago. We felt so at home at CPT because it’s a hub for emerging creators working in non-traditional ways. Our piece is created without one singular writer; it’s all six of us creating together non-hierarchically, which is exactly the kind of work you can expect to see at CPT. It’s innovative, friendly, accessible, and home to a wide range of multidisciplinary work, so we were thrilled to be invited back.

What can audiences expect from Dead and Kicking?

The show is inspired by a true story about a woman who’s been declared legally dead, even though she’s very much alive. It’s absurd, because she would go somewhere and try to use her ID card or driver’s license, and even though she’s there, in person, obviously alive, the system says she’s deceased, so there’s nothing anyone can do. We saw a lot of theatrical potential in this situation, because the story is so unbelievable, but it’s also really sobering to realise how much someone’s life can be impacted by being accidentally deleted off the system. And you’d think that it’s something that can be reversed, but it’s not that simple. We use devices from documentary theatre-making, original music, and dance numbers to delve into this puzzling story, and it’s really funny, but also really not.

What was the initial inspiration for the show?

Tilly: The true story itself, which we discovered in articles published in 2021. We were so taken by the absurdity of the situation and found that it provoked far greater questions than answers: how can someone living be declared dead? And how can what is so clearly a bureaucratic error be so difficult to reverse? We were drawn to the extremes and how we can demonstrate the absurdity of the situation by exploring its absolute, absurd limits and putting that on stage.

What do you enjoy most about your characters in the show?

Camilla: We’ve been working on the show for two years now, so Jeanne feels like an old friend. Although the character of Jeanne is an imagining of the real person she’s based on, she feels so real and alive, and it really helps us hone in on the main message of the play: that she is alive even if all her paperwork says she isn’t.

Larissa: I get to play the quest goblin, and it’s just a beautiful opportunity to let my freak flag fly. I feel sometimes that the goblin is the most unadulterated version of my truest self, and I love it because nothing is off-limits for the goblin.

What is your favourite element of the show?

Rosa: The mischievous troupe that leads Jeanne on her journey and the various shapeshifting that takes place. They take the form of anything, from a bank manager to a bureaucrat to a goblin – it never fails to make me giggle.

Ezra: I think my favourite element is how quickly we build a shape and then smash it apart. Our piece is FAST, and because there are five of us onstage, it gives us the opportunity to really use our bodies to jump between different places, atmospheres, and beasts. For example, our bureaucratic offices have a satisfying rigidity to them while simultaneously being completely and utterly insane. I think it’s allowed us to get really creative in our staging, which I’m excited for people to see.

Could you describe a moment during the production process that felt magical or transformative?

Tilly: We knew early on in the process that we wanted to include music in the show. We worked using a lot of improvisation exercises to explore lyricism and melody, and this was really liberating. It was a discovery that remains key to us: that we always find our best work in moments of play.

Rosa: There was a point early on where we were improvising a song based on a very rough sketch of what we thought our villain character might be. That improvisation alone was a lightbulb moment for us, in both the character and our play: we realised it should be larger than life, lifting from and also distorting musical traditions, while still inspired by a bizarre, truthful story. I remember we all felt very excited after that day – and that song we improvised is now a firm centerpiece of the show.

Larissa: Yes! The morning we all wrote the villain song together. We were doing musical improv and taking turns playing instruments. We came up with some of the most obscure and hilarious lyrics. Some of them made it into the final song; it’s definitely a highlight of the show.

Will you be frequenting the bar after your show, and if so, are you hoping people might stay to ask you about the show?

Camilla: Yes! I’ll be having a gin and tonic; come and chat! I want people to ask me about the real person; I want them to tell me about their own absurd experiences with bureaucracy. This is such a fascinating, absurd, and heartbreaking story, but we have lots of examples in our society of people who are also lost to the system. How do we envision a world where we see people as people, as messy and nuanced as we all are?

Martha: I would love for people to be enthusiastic about the show, but I also never want people to lie – so that means it’s up to us to make sure people don’t need to. But it truly always is helpful to get people’s feedback and genuine thoughts, so I would rather people tell me their opinions than ask me questions. Most memorable bit of feedback is probably my brother saying he was surprised that the show was actually genuinely funny because, you know, I had been a writer on it.

If budget or reality were not an issue, what’s the one piece of scenery/set you’d love to have in your show?

Camilla: This is such a hard question because so much of who we are as a company is DIY, and we want the costume, set, and props to have a handmade feel. It wasn’t on purpose, but we found ourselves making intricate props for hours only to use them in a 30-second moment of the show. It’s kind of thrilling; I called them fast-props, and they echo a sort of late-stage capitalism consumerism. In that vein, if money was no object, I would want a huge cliche musical theatre set that we unveiled with ‘JEANNE IS DEAD’ in huge light-up letters. It would be unveiled only for a moment, and then the main character would trash it into smithereens.

Ezra: My big-budget dream would be to have a 20-strong West End dance company suddenly come out and join Jeanne in the most razzle-dazzle of all dance numbers. I imagine Jeanne ducking under high kicks and swerving jazz hands trying to escape. It would be fun and surreal and completely over the top, and last only three minutes before they were gone. Sadly, we don’t quite have the stage space or the budget for this… yet.

What’s the most valuable piece of advice you’ve received during your career, and how has it influenced your work on this show?

Martha: The most tangibly helpful thing someone has said to me is just to focus on the thing ahead of you. Just do what you are doing and worry about the rest later. When you’re a freelancer the pressure to have things sorted and lined up feels insurmountable, so it’s nice to come back to the simplicity of just focusing on the task at hand. 

Larissa: I think it’s Judy Dench who said you need to take your job seriously, but not yourself, which I love. Obviously we all care very much about making something we’re proud of, but I learn the same lesson over and over which is that you need to release the need to be good in order to let the ideas flow. Definitely in this process, I found we needed to stop sitting around a table trying to come up with clever ideas and just get on our feet and do an improv. When I’m in the “yes-and” mode, my brain opens up in a different way. We can spend hours trying to think of the right words to write, but then when we get up and just do the scene the words will suddenly flow. I think when we’re playing, that’s when we’re closest to our genius.

Thank you to Camilla, Martha, Tilly, Rosa, Larissa and Ezra for talking to us today. We hope your journey to prove you are alive, on stage, is a great success!

Dead and Kicking plays at Camden People’s Theatre between the 3rd and 5th April.