David Brady chats about Proforca Theatre Company’s new show Big Love
Proforca Theatre Company is well known for placing ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, often putting audiences through an emotional wringer. But with their latest show, Big Love, Writer and Director David Brady is taking a deliberately joyful turn. Described as part party, part confession, and part love letter, Big Love leans into confetti cannons, strobe lights, and gratuitous power ballads to tell the story of a charismatic protagonist running full speed ahead from reality.
Ahead of its run at the Lion & Unicorn Theatre as part of the HERE | FOR season, we caught up with David to chat about collaborative creation with performer Samuel Warren and Associate Director Mark Conway, creating the ultimate feel-good fringe playlist, and why expressing joy in today’s world is a necessary act of rebellion.
Big Love is described as part party, part confession, and part love letter. What was the initial spark or idea that led you to write this piece?
Big Love is a little bit of a departure from work that you might have seen before from Proforca. We’ve made it our signature to create work about Ordinary People in Extraordinary circumstances but this time we deliberately wanted to lean into something a bit more fun, and something that leans away from heavier emotional material in favour of feel-good, proper fringe-on-a-good-day vibes.
The protagonist is obsessed with grand cinematic gestures; confetti cannons, strobe lights, and power ballads; yet avoids the realities right in front of him. What draws you as a writer to characters who hide behind grand romantic ideals?
I don’t normally! A lot of the work we’ve made in the past has featured characters who really lean into their feelings and talk about them, often at great length.
With Big Love, I wanted to do something slightly different. He’s 100% out there most of the time: generous, funny, charismatic, comfortable in his own skin and completely open with the audience. But as the show goes on, it becomes clear that all of that openness is also a kind of cover. He isn’t hiding because he can’t express himself. He’s hiding in plain sight, behind all the noise, the big gestures and the belief in something extraordinary.
What interested me was the contradiction in someone who can give so much of himself away and still avoid the things that are actually right in front of him. And it isn’t really one thing he’s running from. It’s lots of different versions of something, all accumulating as the show goes on.
There are plenty of music references; from gratuitous power ballads, Edith Piaf, and dancefloors in the show’s identity. Did you create the show’s Spotify playlist before you’d writing the first page of the script?
I worked closely with Olivia Thompson, who created a song called Big Love which references our friendship and the Lion & Unicorn very heavily as part of her debut album. This was the starting point for the show but there’s something brilliant (and very silly) about all those massive love songs we’re used to. We stuffed a playlist FULL of them – the sillier and bigger the better. All of these were then used as references through the story – but also as a guide for the creation of a character who was a bit larger than life and loves (literally) life to the max whilst running away at top speed from all of his responsibility. It’s a playlist full of joy, power ballads, Edith Piaf warbling away at the Top of the Eiffel Tower and if we can get a singalong moment for the audience then I’d love that too.
Writing and directing a solo show requires a very specific dynamic. What has the collaborative process been like working with performer Samuel Warren and Associate Director Mark Conway to bring this single character to life?
Big Love’s actually been a joy to write, not only because I normally suffer with fairly crippling writer’s block, but because there’s been a true sense of collaboration on the work from the outset. I love working with Mark Conway – he brings such a brilliant positivity and energy into the room and has a really nice way of working with other actors that really enhances the experience. We’ve also spent time working with Sam this year and he’s a joy – a brilliant actor with loads of really positive energy and some great suggestions for creating his character – and I can’t wait to see what you make of what he’s going to do with the role.
As Proforca’s headline contribution to the HERE | FOR season, how does Big Love reflect the wider ethos of Proforca Theatre Company and the kind of “next-level,” audience-aware fringe work you want to champion?
Big Love for me was a deliberate effort at us doing some very different work and I described it the other day as us parking a circus tent in the car park of the Here | For Season. Each of the other shows was selected as part of a big 50 company application process, and we’ve deliberately curated really strong story-led work from some amazing other companies and creatives. For us it’s a statement of intent – Here | For is about giving a leg up to other companies and helping them get new work made in a world which makes that harder every day, and Big Love is the flagship “optimistic” climax of that season which I hope will demonstrate that we’ve got stories worth telling.
What do you hope audiences feel when the lights come back up at the end, especially after being immersed in such a high-energy, confetti-filled party?
My hope, honestly, is that in a pantheon of work where we’ve left people a bit emotionally battered by shows when they’ve seen them that Big Love does exactly the opposite. We want the show to be a joyful, lovely night out at the theatre, which people can feel a part of, and that they celebrate with us over a pint of beer downstairs at the pub afterwards, having had a great time with no other expectations than that.
If you had to distill the ultimate message of Big Love about how we love and connect with people in the modern world into one phrase or idea, what would it be?
Big Love is about embracing the little things we love about the people around us, big moments that make us want to fall in love with the world again, and not being afraid sometimes to express joy in a world that would probably rather we didn’t. If someone calls someone they love and tells them so after seeing the show, then we’ll have done our jobs.
As always, our thanks to David for his time and continued support of Everything Theatre. Big Love will play at Lion and Unicorn Theatre from Tuesday 27 October until Saturday 7 November, rounding off their HERE | FOR season.
