Jake Brasch and Nadja Leonhard-Hooper engage outrageously in conversation about their new Fringe show, HOLE, an irreverent 70-minute musical by American Sing-Song.
The deeply ridiculous is the back door of the soul – it’s the secret path to the profound and the divine.
How are you and the USA?
We’re great! Our country is falling to fascism and simultaneously all of our dreams are coming true. It’s a very confusing time in a young girl’s life (together we make one girl, FYI).
Let’s talk HOLE! We’ll start with the obvious: how did you come up with a post-apocalyptic religious cult that’s saved from damnation by wearing butt plugs?
We started with a lot of questions:
What’s going on with men? Are they doing okay? How should one be a man? Why is the Christian right so horny? How could we defamiliarise their obsession with chastity and control in a way that teases out how truly perverted their worldview is? Why do so many people who claim to have been abducted by aliens report being anally probed? How could a mother disown her child for being gay? Is there anything up there? What happens after we die? How do we make gay people gayer, and allies gay?
We decided to answer these questions in the only way we knew how: by writing a musical.
Our first musical was about an 86-year-old woman finding sexual liberation in the sea. We wanted our second to be about men. What makes a man? Who makes a man? We were dealing with some stuff in our own families – cousins getting disowned for being queer. Sad, fucked-up stuff. And simultaneously, we were thinking about aliens. Specifically, why is everyone who gets abducted by aliens getting anally probed? Somehow, these two ideas came together to create the musical HOLE!
HOLE! is described as a “$50-million horny musical fantasia” performed by just two “deranged freaks” with a keyboard and some trash. What’s the joy in doing something so big with so little?
We make “theatre of the (deranged) mind” because we know that any time you’re telling a story, it’s not actually happening on stage – it’s happening in the mind of the audience. It’s almost like an old-school radio play: yes, you’re watching us perform and make the music, but in your mind, you’re flying into the sky because your butt plug fell out.
HOLE! is fun because almost nothing is happening on stage, and the audience walks away with incredibly vivid images. It’s the show they’re making in their minds. Imagination is better than a big set budget. Imagination is better than AI! People sometimes forget that all theatre happens in the mind of the audience. What’s going on on stage is just there to activate it.
The show plays with religious fanaticism, queer longing and absurd comedy. How do you strike the balance between the deeply ridiculous and the unexpectedly profound?
Folks are always shocked by how earnest and rigorous our show is. We believe in the ridiculous as a pathway to the heart. The deeply ridiculous is the back door of the soul – it’s the secret path to the profound and the divine. We don’t know how to make serious things that aren’t funny. You want me to cry when you haven’t made me laugh yet? Jesus. Buy me dinner first! Take me high to take me deep.
You’re bringing this wild, butt-plug-fuelled spectacle from sold-out NYC previews to the cobbled chaos of Edinburgh. What are you most excited (or terrified) about performing HOLE! at the Fringe?
Oh, it’s pure excitement. We’ve done the show in front of people five times now, and the feedback is frankly rabid. People have the best time. We’re frequently told their faces hurt from laughing so hard. Getting to do that every night is a dream.
We also can’t wait for that random Tuesday night show where there are ten people in the audience and none of them think it’s funny. It will be hell to play – but in a meta sense, it’s the funniest possible way this show could be performed: for an audience of people who are deeply unamused. So hopefully that will happen. But only once.
There’s a huge queer heart underneath all the madness. What do you hope queer audiences – and audiences in general – take away from this show?
If you’re gay, can you be gayer? If you’re an ally – why? Stop that. Grow up. It’s time to be gay. If you’re neither gay nor an ally, have you considered prostate stimulation?
If God really is watching, what do you hope She thinks of HOLE!?
We hope God smiles on our efforts to troll our way into a more loving and open world. Barring that, we hope She strikes us down. Can you imagine? It’s our closing night at the Fringe and we’re singing our hit number Sky Fucking in the Sky, and suddenly Cowgate is struck by lightning? That would be amazing.
Thanks so much for speaking to me today. Finally, what shows are you excited about seeing this Fringe?
DeliaDelia! The Flat Chested Witch! is a New York act that seems really spiritually connected to us. We can’t wait to see that Witch play basketball. We love Recent Cutbacks – they do famous movies live on stage and it’s amazing. We think they’re doing Lord of the Rings and Jurassic Park this year. Other than that… you tell us! We’re so excited to see theatre from all over the world.
