I WILL LAUGH

27/02/2021

Coming up to the end of our Q season I'm keen to release some of my writings! Very blessed to have had this opportunity as part of the Fringe festival and Q Theatre's Summer at Q. Hope you're all doing well, have a great weekend, ka pai, cheers,

Sean

"This is half of how I take care of myself during this piece. My decompression is a pointed stream of consciousness instead of a free flowing train of thought, jumping from track to track, it is well and truly shackled to one pair rails. As it trundles along it burns the thoughts that have accumulated in my head, weighed down and pressed into coals by the weight of each other. Once processed: my mind is freer.

My other process is proactive instead of retroactive. This process is designed to keep me healthy and safe for long stretches of the piece (my ideal style). It is much like a filter. Anything anyone ever says to me in the space can be chalked up to one of three categories: firstly, it could be honest, which I laugh at because it's beautiful. A celebratory laugh. Glad someone felt safe to be honest and wanted to share with me. Secondly: it could be fun. Something fun can be any kind of play in the space; testing the rules of the room and those of the amnesty (a popular one is playing with the chairs and my glasses). It is in this category that dark humour or inflammatory comments fall. Comments deliberately looking for a nervous laugh is a form of play, testing me, and I think that's beautiful. People feeling encouraged to engage with weird performance art.

Finally, sometimes people say things that are genuinely funny. Everyone has their own specific sense of humour that they put in their speech and if you're listening enough you can catch it and laugh along. Without any obligation to respond except for laughter I can more easily distinguish when people share moments of their humour because I'm not putting energy into thinking of the wittiest or most relevant response.

When you think about it like that, it's easy, huh?"

15/02/2021

Kia ora everyone! Next weeks season at Q Theatre will depend on the alert level at the time. Part of our contract with the theatre is that all performances in the Vault space can't happen at any level higher than alert level 1.

The teams at Q and Auckland Fringe are putting in some decent mahi to keep everyone from the event teams in the loop. Keep up the kōrero and I'll keep you posted.

Take care of yourself and each other.

Ka pai, cheers,
Sean

20/01/2021

I'll see you in Feb, Auckland!

This is an AMNESTY event. Anybody can say anything to me and it is important that they are not prosecuted for anything they say, and I can’t stress this enough, to me. Come and share a joke you couldn’t normally get away with, come and tell me a problem you don’t want advice for, come and reveal a secret that has never been greeted with laughter.

I don’t mind, I enjoy it! I WILL LAUGH.

TD: "Kia ora, kia ora, my name is Sean Burnett Dugdale-Martin and I'm gonna be performing a piece called I WILL LAUGH for Summer at Q and Auckland Fringe festivals.

I'm back!

We got accepted into the Q, Summer at Q festival. How good is that?

The Whangarei Fringe was really successful in my mind and after going there and doing it i'm really happy to say that it worked and i'm really- i'm more confident in the piece now.

Which is why i'm bringing it to Auckland!

This leg of the piece is gonna be a little bit different because, uhh... one, it's a evening show it's 8:45pm instead of the 1pm at Whangarei, the afternoon show, and also it's a one-hour set instead of a four-hour set that I did in Whangarei. So it's a bit less of a marathon and a bit more of a... like, evening... piece...

nice.

And also the space we're in is the Vault at Q Theatre. I'm very excited I love Q Theatre, some of my favourite performances have been there. I remember watching Joel Toebeck play Mr Burns at Q Theatre, uhh, James Wenley did Dr Drama there in 2020 I'm very excited to inhabit the space because a lot of- I watched Wild Dogs Under My Skirt there?!

I'm very excited. There's a lot of greats that have gone through that space and a lot of inspirations.

But yeah, come along it's February 24th to 27th, 8:45pm. It's an hour, come grab a drink at the bar, come downstairs, see me, there's no late comer point, take it easy, enjoy the piece. Listen to each other. Ka pai, cheers.

Oh yep, I reckon that's it."

12/01/2021

Proud to announce the new season as part of Summer At Q and Auckland Fringe Fest!!

WOAH (woah) super stoked with the 2020 Whangarei season and will go into more depth about my findings, about who I'm thankful for, and about this new stage for the piece in a new video coming soon.

I will say now that I am thankful for the support and collaboration from Q Theatre, the Auckland Fringe team and Stray Theatre Company. Here's to an open-hearted season.

Stay safe, listen to each other ❤

Ka pai, cheers,
Sean Burnett Dugdale-Martin

Sean Burnett Dugdale-Martin is going to sit in a chair, and whatever you do or say, he will laugh. The show was described by his Whangarei Fringe audience as beautiful and therapeutic and we can’t wait to see what happens in Vault 🧐

I Will Laugh is part of 2021 which is supported by Q and The University of Auckland to make our venues more accessible and simpler to budget for.

qtheatre.co.nz/IWillLaugh

18/10/2020

Kia ora, this is happening this week! Here's a little vid about some inspirations and influences for the piece. There's always more to every stroy SO if I get anything wrong or if you spot any innacuracies, drop something in the comments. The more we know, the stronger we are, ka pai, cheers.

VD (text):

What inspired the work? A huge inspiration was definitely Marina Abramovic. And she's this powerhouse of a performance artist, she was- she's amazing- she did this performance called The Artist Is Present where she sat in a chair at a table and whoever sat across from her, uhh, she just looked at them. She was present with them- and it was beautiful and it was touching and that's heavily influenced this as you can probably see, the... like the setting that I'm gonna use, the table and the two chairs is directly borrowed from that piece of work just because it's so simple.

Check out her work! There's a documentary about it. There's a documentary about- I think specifically The Artist Is Present but it's definitely about her.

Another inspiration is basement theatre, in Auckland, they did, uhh... every year they have, aahh- ohh let me get these words right.

What is it called? An application? I guess... a suggestions application? no... NO... what is it?

OOH- Provocation! There we go, nice!

It was- every year they put out a Fringe provocation for their Fringe season, this, uhh- this year, 2020, it's, I believe Eleanor Bishop helped out on Documentary or Everyone Is An Artist but I know I think it was last year or the year before there was one that was durational work and what came from that was shows like Jelly Baby and An Open Apology.

And it was actually An Open Apology that really caught my eye and that was George Fenn's show How To Apology which he had come back and turned- hey, hey! *laughs*

*Laughs with dog*

Get outta here.

It was George Fenn's show How To Apology which he had, to my understanding, I could be wrong, I've been wrong before, that he had taken and explored a bit more and it turned into Open Apology which Rachael and Ravi jumped on to aswell and they made this beautiful sort of show where they had a little fishbowl with stuff that I think audience members put in and it was for hours- it was a come and go kinda show and they would pick something out and they, uhh- each of them one at a time would walk up and pick something out and they would apologize like to or about or for that thing. And it could be anything the audience gave them.

And I worked with Rachael, this is Rachael Longshaw-Park, and she- at the same time, was working on a show called Dr Drama which I had the good fortune of stage managing on. And so I got to work with Rachael and kinda like pick her brains a bit and just watch her work and she is a huge inspiration for not only this show but just the theatre I create.

15/10/2020

An introduction to myself and some of the reasons around why I devised the piece and decided to perform it. More episodes to come. This is early days for this piece of work, this Fringe is the development season SO if you had any advice for a young player I'd love to hear it. Be well, ka pai, cheers!

VD (text):
Kia ora, kia ora, umm...
Ko Mahuhu ki te rangi i te mounga
Ko Mahurangi i te awa
Ko ngati kuhungunu o nga iwi
And if that was interesting to you, if your ears perked up then that's fair. It's a bit of an interesting story, that one, but it's a bit long so if you're interested let me know and i'll tell you all about it.
Ko Tracey Martin toku whaea
Ko Ben Dugdale toku matua
Ko Sean Dugdale-Martin ahau
kia ora kia ora kia ora.
Hello.
I'm gonna be performing a piece called I Will Laugh at Whangarei Fringe 2020.

Why?
Well, the piece is about verbal amnesty and gauranteed laughter. One of the reasons I wanted to do it is because there are people that hold the belief that PC's gone mad, ya know- like, political correctness is bordering on thought policing or stuff like that. And I wanted to explore how it feels to be completely unpoliced, like, I love the idea of amnesty and what that does to a situation or a thought process.

*rubs nose*

Like, what happens if someone comes up and says the most vile thing they can think of, something like, racist or sexist or terrible and the laugh they are greeted with is joy based. It's not a nervous laugh, it's not a scoff, it's, it's... "man I'm so glad you said that thing, like, that's the funniest thing I could think of" does that intention of the response change how you feel about the delivery? Or what it is, what the thing is?

I dunno! Keen to find out.

That's one reason why, another reason is I think we all deserve a laugh.

There's another, uhh, another interesting thing is I think that there are things... hold on. Let me get my words right. *laughs* There are things that you wanna share with people but you don't wanna get a lecture for, you know? Like, you just wanna share it you don't want advice you don't want somebody to solve all your problems you just want to share it with someone and I thought "this is a good place for that!" isn't it? You can share the deepest, darkest, secret and it's in complete amnesty there's gonna be no recording of it, as much as i'd wanted to, there's gonna be no recording the event, there's gonna be no security of the event so, yeah, anything you wanna share you can and we'll just explore what that feels like.