in which liz breslin talks to some of the creators of Glory Whole, Billie Fee and Damian Golfinopoulos from Grecco Romank, and Tom Burns /Copper MaeSteal, ahead of their performance at the Festival of Live Art 2025 (Saturday 14 June, 8:30pm, Basement Theatre) and transcribes some of the scraps.
T — Tom Burns / Copper MaeSteal
D — Damian Golfinopoulos
B — Billie Fee
L — liz breslin
L: this Zoom room as a queer space and tell me about how you came to the glory holes
T: a blank canvas. What do we want to do and what story do we want to tell? What emotions do we want to give?
make people question you feel a little bit uncertain and have to kind of have a little bit of doubts and just those. Yeah, those energies that kind of come with not knowing what you're getting yourself into,
about kind of the sexualisation of the queer body or just the human body in general and how flesh and skin is overly sexualised so I think the glory hole allows us to kind of tell this narrative
L: closing show energy? Closing at F.O.L.A like you did with Fashion Week.
D: Grecco often get asked to finish the night for people.
to sort of be this excuse for them to finalise the night, you know, to kind of lose things a little bit and for things to kind of get a little bit dark. So
a sense of humor as well, with the idea that people weren't clear about what they were about to see
the combination of Copper and Grecco's humour.
Human Bin
this idea of possible kink gone too far
it's always suggested but never, you know made clear
T: like human connection and perfectionism, and this kind of need for validation from yourself, but also from other people. And the glory hole, I felt like, really touched on that, where it's about this like connection and validation within yourself as well as with someone else.
And then there's also that kind of fly on the wall aspect because throughout our performance we're having the audience really be a part of it as well
So the audience is almost the performance for us to watch whilst we're performing for them.
D: no escape from it, once you’ve squeezed into that entrance way.
B: we’re not theatre performers
more used to being in grotty little bars
Basement not a proscenium arch theatre
Black box
important for us to break
out of that
form and expectations
L: like breaking the fourth wall or something
but as a performer, you're watching an audience, right?
D: I'm never able to tell the audience from where I'm at behind a wall of gear
funny cos I would get reports back about ohh, did you see this or did you see that sledgehammer come across or who threw that wig at me?
B: You're also just head-banging so hard you can’t actually tell
T: It's quite nice as well having the mix of Grecco and how obviously they're used to doing their longer form performances that are about an hour long in these clubs and at these bars and at these stages compared to myself who started off in the drag world doing four minute numbers and a club and then moving more into the event space and trying to draw my performances out from that kind of monkey dancing on the stage performance to more of an elongated hour long performance piece. And it almost takes that expectation off of like you have three minutes you have to do a split and do a kick and jump around and do this. And it's a lot more conceptual
the props and the visuals and the people and the human interaction
than someone doing a quick five six seven eight
D: this next performance that we do at F.O.L.A
at the Basement, it is this Grecco performance, this Grecco concert. It is obviously a bunch of these songs that you know
so though it is this hour long performance piece, there
are still are those moments to breathe and pause
It's not as if it's this huge kind of roller
coaster that's just going up, up, up, up, up, the
toxic kind of attempt to reach validation
things do break apart.
There is there is a narrative arc to it all, which was fun to add to the show.
And the character Copper MaySteal is almost like, I wouldn't say a ringmaster, but maybe you know how you have a devil and an angel on the shoulder? Copper May is just a devil on the shoulder of the show.
B: I’d I say you're also the angel as well. I feel like you're both.
D: Suggesting
B: Maybe you’re the devil Damian, Maybe Copper’s the angel?
D: I’m like the Fat Controller. This tumorous Fat Controller
gotta work on that metaphor but yeah, Tom sort of just
seduces both us and the audience through this, this, this narrative arc.
And there's no seating, so you have to stand. Yeah. So there is no
sitting down with your thoughts.
L: I've got thoughts
and this made me think of something. The whole like, let's put the Fat Controller next to the angel and the devil.
D: I like that
L: Made me think of Billie, when you were talking on RNZ about scavenging and putting things together as well, I was literally like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes at the radio because
like, that's my so
` I just did a PhD
and my whole thing was queer scavenging and community
and like finding the scraps and putting stuff together
B: I've never really thought about our scavenging as being the queering of our house, I suppose it is. I’m kind of a bisexual woman cliche in that sense maybe, yeah, thrifting all the time. But Copper, your aesthetic is creating something by elevating a lot of scavenged material eh.
T: Yeah, I think a lot. I've definitely done that with this production. There is a lot of prop making and design. I think overall we have close to,
there are a few double ups,
but overall is close to 40 props throughout this hour-long
piece.
smaller handheld pieces and some larger pieces as well
wire and cardboard and foam and plastic bits of fabric and liquid latex
as well as paint and spray paint
D: regarding the scavenging aspect
Grecco, I can't speak for Tom, but I do see aspects of this idea that we live in
an age of disinformation and I would say it's a junkyard of disinformation and we
have no choice but as artists to kind of reflect back scraps of, you know, all this muck
and slime they're kind of surrounded by
T: agreed
D: and taking these little bits of trash and then assembling them into our own, I don't know, shields or, you know, pieces of armour that, that although ugly, you know, do kind of give us some kind of strength.
T: agreed. I think they very much fits into this narrative as well, because going into the props and, a lot to do with the sorry perfectionism that we're kind of talking about
how perfectionism is something that's almost sold through capitalism and through consumerisation and how you're sold this idea of what you need in order to be perfect. So throughout our production, we have Billy and Mikey striving for validation, striving for perfectionism. And I'm kind of there as this obscure ideal of that.
on the most obscure route, because obviously perfectionism isn't a real thing,
So I think that very much fits into the scavenging in the prop design and not wanting to be commercial in terms of ohh, we've got this money, let's go and buy XYZ. It's like let's get the base pieces that we need and then the rest is kind of scavenging. What we want to create and design and make in order to show that narrative through the story, if that makes sense
L: so by making the scavenging explicit is that your critique of, you know, the perfectionism, the, the capitalism and like, like the colonised ways of thinking?
D: Grecco doesn't believe we live in a neoliberal situation We say it's techno feudalism. That's our framework for seeing the world in this day and age. It's gone far beyond the horrors of capitalism and it’s something much worse.
L: Techno feudalism
D: Although, although like a lot of the concepts and things we say are sounding heavy, I think that all of us are actually quite fun. There is like just an element of an enjoyment and rivalry to what we're doing. I guess this is a very limited opportunity to see this collaboration and to see a show that's kind of got this intensity and
B: I'd say like for the audience, I suppose it's like come with come with an open mind and ready to yeah, ready to go to see the Basement in a slightly different way. Our music is always, despite techno feudal themes, it's always gonna be party music. Yeah. You know, like we are. We're partying through the techno, feudal hellhole. With Copper and we're going on the journey together.
T: And it's not as if we're just being ignorant to everything going on the world and saying we're gonna party. It's like we still have those points. We're still touching on all those things, whilst also not being like, this is our exact worldview and you have to think the same way as us. And you know what I mean? My only thing I think would just be, yeah, coming in with little expectations about what you're going to see and being pricked to leave questioning everything.
