Johanna Allen is one of Australia’s most versatile artists. Cabaret, musical theatre, a producer, a writer — the list of Johanna’s achievement’s is extremely impressive. Once again, Johanna is returning to the Adelaide Cabaret Festival with a brand new show, Pop Culture Vulture.
Johanna’s association with the Adelaide Cabaret Festival has a rich history, including roles in The Wild Party – The Music of Andrew Lippa, Suitcase – The Music of Sean Peter, An Evening with Jeremy Sams, as well as her own shows Mixtape, The Songs that Got Away and Cake.
Glam Adelaide was fortunate to speak to Johanna ahead of the premiere of Pop Culture Vulture about the show and what it is about the Adelaide Cabaret Festival that she loves.
“The Adelaide Cabaret Festival remains my favourite festival and I’ve worked on quite a lot by now. It remains my favourite because it’s in my hometown and because I’m invested in it. I think conceptually and from a vision perspective, there’s nothing like it in the world, because it provides the most freedom for any artist to explore what music and text do together, and how an audience responds to them. It’s unlike any other festival in the world. Emerging cabaret artists have the opportunity to be mentored by people who have been doing it for a long time and been doing it in different places all around the world. And joyously you find out that Adelaide should be incredibly proud of not only its talent, but what it can assemble and what it can create.”
Johanna went on to share why festivals, like the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, are vital for the performing arts landscape.
“I think they’re crucial. I think there are very few platforms for new works or to explore new ideas, musical or theatrical. The wonderful thing about the Cabaret Festival is that the platform is so broad, it allows any professional artist to put forward an idea and, according to the curation of that year, that idea can be explored. Commercial theatre companies and commercial music theatre companies are governed in part by sustainability and the box office. It isn’t to say the Cabaret Festival doesn’t have those same considerations, but its freedom allows artists to put forward new ideas and explore new musical and dramatic concepts. It does it in a way where anything goes and the audience is warm and inviting and there to love it, and that’s such a gift for any artist to be part of it.”
Over the years, Johanna has created many wonderful cabaret performances that shed a unique look at the world. She is known for twisting well-known pieces of music into brand-new interpretations. We asked Johanna what her process is when creating new works.
“I find that things just ruminate and ruminate in my head, over and over and over. Then what will happen is I will have thought about it for six months before there’s a project or even an opportunity for a story. I’ll sort of think,’Oh, that would go so well with that,’ or, ‘What if we could do that with this?’. I try to think in terms of musical colours – how would that sound if I did that with cello or a different instrument? One of my favourite things is to take songs that are very established and do a version that doesn’t sound anything like it, or sounds just enough like it that people are familiar.”
Johanna’s brand new show, Pop Culture Vulture premieres this Wednesday night, June 26.
“Think of me as your own personal cabaret bin chicken. I am picking through the morsels of music to present a platform that ranges from dramatic, operatic repertoire to the things I sang in my bedroom with a hairbrush. It’s largely pop tunes, reinvented in a different array of musical styles and in different languages, but it’s also a soundtrack for the ages – it says that audacity never goes out of style.”
Once again, Johanna will be collaborating with her long-time music director, Mark Ferguson.
“I love working with Mark because there are very few artists who are as good at picking up an idea and turning it into a musical language like he can. And he does it in a really interesting and innovative way. For me, coming from a classical and a musical theatre background, the freedom that he brings, the ideas he brings as a jazz improv player – I just love that marriage of musical ideas. It means my world broadens. He has got such incredible instincts around storytelling that he puts into his musical language, but he does it in a way that embraces a far broader musical platform than if I worked with someone who was from my own world.”
Pop Culture Vulture premiere’s this Wednesday night.
Pop Culture Vulture
Wednesday 19 June at 7pm
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre
https://www.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au/whats-on/pop-culture-vulture
Photo credit: Claudio Raschella
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