Writer/performer Mella Faye, artistic director of PechoMama, brings her Oedipus Electronica to London next month. She tells us more about this exciting show below.
“A powerhouse production for our times”, this show “marries London’s grit with searing live Electronica”.
Where: Brixton House
When: 6-9 Mar
Ticket link: https://brixtonhouse.co.uk/shows/oedipus-electronica/
Your show OedipusElectronica has attracted much praise – what makes it new and different, and why should audiences come along?
It’s full of the rawness of the times we’re living in.It’s set in a very real London, with London’s unique blend of poverty and privilege.
But the standout difference is that this Oedipus is Jocasta’s story. It’s a deeply feminine, creative, and carnal rollercoaster – an attempt to birth something against all the odds.
It’s the story of the conflict of the call of motherhood, of the struggles with IVF, with trying to make sense of grief and desire. We can guarantee that audiences will be highly entertained and intoxicated.
It’s even more of an edge-of-your-seat thriller-horror than the original Oedipus Rex. So if you like your theatre to leave you breathless then this is the show for you.
You write, direct and perform what sounds like an exhausting show for any of these roles – how do you make sure there is time and care for you, and which role do you find most rewarding?
The hard work was done in the making, and so the performance is the sweet reward for me.
75 minutes of being completely present and engaged with my fellow actors and musicians.It really feeds me. I come home exhausted and wired, but totally nourished.
The story of Oedipus and Jocasta still fascinates. Why were you drawn to it, and how did it evolve into its current form of grief for a long dead child?
The Greek myths are just so brilliantly epic in scale.Before Oedipus Electronica, we made Medea Electronica. Medea did the thing that all mothers are NOT supposed to do; kill your kids.
In Oedipus, Jocasta has sex with her son. I’m so interested in dismantling the idea that humans are inherently good or bad. I think that we are al linnocent and confused, and that confusion can lead us to do terrible things.
So these Greek tragedies give me a brilliant challenge; how can I justify these women’s actions? How can I prove their innate innocence whilst they carry out their monstrous acts.
And there’s a lot of fun for me in reclaiming them from a female perspective. We’ve had about 10,000 years of patriarchy, which in the grand scheme of things, isn’t that long.
But it’s long enough for us to have thoroughly absorbed the patriarchal gaze. Until about 60 years ago,all of our stories were told from this cultural perspective. Without a template to work from, we (women) are now feeling our way into the public arena with our stories.
These stories mostly don’t look, feel or sound anything like the hero journey that we have been sold. In my experience the heroine’s journey is about a search for wholeness rather than treasure or power.
And this Jocasta is searching for wholeness through her creativity. We carry so much in our bodies – love, loss… The experience that Jocasta lives in this story is a processing of that grief … an exorcism almost.
It evolved into a grief story through my own (very different) experience of grief, but also through my interest in the power of our own imaginations … the idea that we can imagine someone or something into being, and rewrite our own story.
Oedipus Electronica includes a live band on stage. How important was the music in the creation of this piece?
It’s a huge part of the DNA of the show. As a band, we jam on a theme: sex/death/grief, until we settle on something, and then it evolves into a track, then an album, and then it does one last evolution into a filmic style score for the live performance.
The band are in constant conversation with the action on stage. The actors and musicians feed on each other’s input. It’s a very beautiful collaboration.
The sound is a mashup of Electronica, jazz, techno, pop, rock. One review described it as playing in sync with the quickening heartbeat of the audience. I love that.
What attracted you to Brixton House for the latest performances of this show?
We brought our first production as Pecho Mamato to Ovalhouse (the same team behind Brixton House) back in 2018, and their support really helped our little company to get off the ground.
So it’s a joy to be bringing it back here, but it’s even more exciting for this particular production as it’s set in Brixton, on these very streets. So it really is a homecoming.
You work across theatre, film, and music to create your content. Do you have a preference, or is it key for you to bring all these together?
They all overlap, and the fun in all of those mediums is found when the magic starts to happen creatively. I still selfproduce a lot of my own work as a necessity, and that par tcan feel like a slog.
The magic is when that work is done and there is room to be truly creative, either alone or even more when I have a room full of people .It’s electric.
You have now created works with Medea and Oedipus as inspiration – who’s next?
I’m currently writing a screenplay about a female composer ,inspired by my own struggles and revelations as an artist. There are no Greek attachments – yet!
I’m in a love affair with the characters I’ve birthed, and am always hankering to spend more time with them. I may adapt that into a theatre show too – but I’m not there yet.
Other lovely projects on the boil at the moment include a show I’m writing and directing for composer Emily Levy, which also explores grief but in a much more delicate and tender way.
It’s a docu-fiction with an amazing ensemble of actor-dancer-musicians, commissioned by Opera North, Britten Pears Arts and Spitalfields Festival.It’s called Me Without You and will be debuting this Spring.
Image credits: Mella Faye/Pecho Mama