BRAINCHILD is a coming of age/creation story told with poignancy and sardonic wit. A gothic romp, stitched together with music, comedy and contemporary dance.
Bringing Frankenstein into the 21stCentury
Subiaco Theatre Centre
Friday 14 and Saturday 15 December at 7.30 pm
Two hundred years ago, Mary Shelley first glimpsed the creature that would become the world’s most enduring bogeyman. Mary’s brainchild started life as the most human of beings, a creature who sought connection and love. Its tragedy was the grisly nature of its conception, the unholy coupling of science and death.
BRAINCHILD explores the origins of the novel during the ‘ungenial summer’ of 1816, when the world was suffering through months of endless night, following the mega-eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia. Against this apocalyptic backdrop, Mary and her lover, the epic poet Percy Shelley, sought refuge at Lake Geneva along with Lord Byron and his entourage but this party found no escape from the insidious darkness threatening the world.
Death seeped into their conversations through ghost story competitions, morbid exchanges about grave robbery and cadaver dissection. BRAINCHILD explores these topics and how these literary giants retreated from the bleakness through the liberal use of laudanum and casual sex, and the less than casual use of sexism.
Created and performed by acclaimed dancer, choreographer, actor and screenwriter, Brian Carbee, in collaboration with Musical Director, renowned WA percussionist and composer, Steve Richter, BRAINCHILD is an audacious coming-of-age/creation story told with poignancy and sardonic wit. This gothic burlesque delves into the nature of creativity, the forces that drove a teenager to conceive such a creature, and how the men in Mary’s life helped provide the template.
Richter will perform the original score live to power this unique theatre experience.
BRAINCHILD brings together comedy, horror, contemporary dance, eccentric performance and eclectic music, all set to roller-coaster narration, in this rollicking expose of the seminal monster, Frankenstein, who embodies our primal fears, whose awesome reach invades our culture and disturbs the sanctuary of our peaceful sleep.