Our Attempt to Explain things
Fake Blood Co. is a Meanjin/Magandjin based independent theatre collective making big, genre driven work for the stage.
Fake Blood was born from a desire to make the kinds of shows we wanted to see.
Performance that borrows from film, music and whatever else we’re obsessing over at the time. Shows with practical effects, ridiculous ideas, big performances and things that probably sounded much easier when someone first suggested them.
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We all know that bigger is better, but only if you know how to use it.
We like performances that announce themselves.
Big emotions. Big images. Fake Blood. We’re not fans of making the audience forget they’re watching theatre. We’re fans of making them forget how crazy it is out there.
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We are all in this together, and that remains true for our art.
Our work develops and evolves through every single artist we engage with. We want their grubby little fingerprints all over it.
We want the people in the room to contribute to what the thing becomes. Every additional voice makes the work a little richer, a little stranger and a lot more human.
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No! Not expensive. Ambitious.
We are suckers for pain. We love those ideas that create logistical nightmares. We like figuring out how something works, building it, breaking it, testing it in front of people and making it better.
Sometimes that means covering performers in an unsettling amount of liquid. Sometimes it means trying to put a live band onstage in under five minutes. Sometimes it means failing to make a volcano erupt onstage.
WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY DO?
besides your dad…
Fake Blood develops and presents original independent theatre in Meanjin/Magandjin and beyond.
Our work sits somewhere between theatre, cabaret and film, leaning heavily into design led theatre.
We develop projects through experimentation and collaboration: writing scripts, throwing ideas into a room, building things, putting them in front of audiences and, most importantly, allowing the work to change as we learn what actually works.
This process has taken our work through independent seasons at PIP Theatre, Backbone, the Empire Theatre, Wynnum Fringe and BackDock, basically any venue we can get into. Most recently, we participated in Dead Puppet Society’s DPS Lab, ending in one kick ass performance at the Princess Theatre.
We’re still figuring out exactly what Fake Blood will become.
And that’s kind of the point.
But we’d be nothing without the people
Our productions might start with an idea, but the shows are made by the people who come into the room with us.
We create spaces, where artists can make ambitious work, contribute meaningfully to the thing they’re making and be properly recognised for it.
Some of the best things we’ve made have come from someone in the room saying, “What if we did this?” and everybody else being stupid enough to say yes.
We believe good work comes from trusting the people you make it with. That means creating rooms where artists feel comfortable having a voice, getting things wrong, changing their minds and leaving their grubby little fingerprints all over the final thing.
We want artists to feel seen, make something they’re proud of and leave wanting to make the kinds of shows our generation deserves.
If you’d like to learn more about the outrageously talented artists who make up our team click below.
