After a sellout season at the 2024 Adelaide Fringe, Distopia is making its return this year.
When the world is plunged into a terrifying and very ambiguous apocalyptic event, best friends and Disney tragics David and Cassie must turn to the only role models they’ve ever needed to survive…Friendship! Song! Dance! Blood sacrifice! This show is that spark of dark, twisted, Disney inspired comedy we all need.
Distopia’s creatives and performers, David Salter and Casmira Lorien, are both local South Australians. David is an award-winning cabaret artist, actor, musician and ventriloquist, best known for Make Believe: Children’s Songs for Grown Ups, and most recently An Evening with Dame Granny Smith which won the Frank Ford Award and toured to the Edinburgh Festival. Casmira Lorien won the TASA award for ‘best female performer’ for her role in Violet during the 2017 Adelaide Fringe. Most recently you might have seen her playing Harper Pitt in Angels in America or being eaten by a dinosaur in the latest Asylum film The Land That Time Forgot.
Both David and Casmira spoke to Glam Adelaide about the show, the creative process and where the original idea behind the show came from.
Casmira:
“I wish I had a good story for you, but I don’t,” Casmira laughed.
“We’ve had the idea for around five years, but it was during COVID that the ball really started rolling. COVID really influenced things for us. I remember being at work and then texting Dave going, ‘What about if it was Disney based, and set in an apocalypse?’ From there it kind of just fell into place. I suggested we call it Dispocalypse, but it was Dave who suggested Distopia, which we both loved, and shows why you should always work with a writing partner.”
We were interested to find out how the creative process worked when writing Distopia. Was it collaborative, or did they each focus on different aspects of the show?
David:
“It was a bit of both. Casmira pretty much wrote an outline for it all in one night. I remember her just texting me the next day and we continued to discuss a series of ideas. Then all of a sudden, there was the first draft out of seemingly nowhere. From there, there was a lot of workshopping. The best thing about this show is it is really created from conversations between us. We’d read scenes together and improve them until there was something that made us both laugh. We kept workshopping pretty much up until the day before we opened last year.”
Casmira:
“We re-read through the script the other day and I had all these ideas of things to put in. Thankfully Dave is the opposite and the sort of person who wants to take stuff out. This makes us a good team, I think.”
Being a Disney inspired show, will there be songs?
David:
“We have some covers and parodies and a few surprises along the way. We really wanted to play on nostalgia and sort of rest on the fact that people would come for the Disney songs… until Disney told us how many songs you’re allowed to use in a show. We then had to retool a few things.”
Both David and Casmira are excited to bring Distopia back this year to the Adelaide Fringe, after a sell-out season last year.
Casmira:
“We were so thrilled by how it was received. We had a short season, but we completely sold it out. We weren’t expecting that at all. For a new piece of work, we were worried that people wouldn’t take a risk and attend, but it really surprised us. We were saying the other day how nice it was to read through the script without the fear we had last year of not knowing how the audience would receive it. We thought it was funny, and it was great to hear the audience laugh at all the gags. I’m more nervous this year about how many shows we have and how to pull the audiences in.”
This year, Distopia will be playing a much longer season and at two different venues, including Gluttony.
David:
“I always tell people it’s two friends at the end of the world singing Disney songs. I know this isn’t much to pull you in there. The poster does a better job because you can see it’s an obvious parody of a zombie apocalypse film. So think of the zombie apocalypse at the end of the world with Disney. It’s very much a black comedy and Disney for adults – certainly not for the kids.”
David will also be bringing his award winning show An Evening with Dame Granny Smith to the Adelaide Fringe.
The legend of stage and screen returns to Adelaide for an intimate on-stage conversation. From her vaudeville debut at age five to her breakthrough role in Disney’s Snow White, Smith will take you on an incredible journey through her storied life and multi-decade career, all told with her trademark candour and wit. Warm, funny, uplifting, absurd and a show you’ll remember for many years to come.
David toured this show to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2024. David shared with us what it was like taking a show overseas and how he processed any changes that were needed for an international audience.
“I really tried to remain open-minded about it because I didn’t know anybody in Edinburgh. I booked a 30-seat venue, and just didn’t know how audiences would take the humour. I got a good response from the audience but I also could tell instantly what needed to go. Some jokes that got the ‘pity laugh’ here in Australia didn’t land a laugh in Edinburgh. So every night there I was dropping jokes from the show if they didn’t land. By the end, the show was 15 minutes leaner, which was really good. All the strongest bits were left and it ended up making the show more fun to perform.”
An Evening with Dame Granny Smith will be performed at the Arthur Arthouse in March this year.
“Because it’s leaner, it feels like a strong show. It’s funnier, and I feel like I can even entice people who’ve seen it before to come back because there are some new gags and it feels like a fresh piece of theatre.”
Distopia
The Kingfisher – Gluttony
February 21 – 23 at 10pm
Chateau Apollo
February 26 – March 21 at 9pm
https://adelaidefringe.com.au/fringetix/distopia-af2025
An Evening with Dame Granny Smith
The Box at ARTHUR ARTHOUSE
March 10 – 22 at 6pm
https://adelaidefringe.com.au/fringetix/an-evening-with-dame-granny-smith-af2025
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