Showpeople: Petra Massey
Petra Massey is a founder member of international performance troupe Spymonkey, whose energetic, surreal style of comedy has been compared to Monty Python. Their first show, Stiff, won the Total Theatre Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and in 2003 they joined Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas with their burlesque cabaret Zumanity. Their new show is a production of Moby Dick
Is the Spymonkey version of Moby Dick going to bear any relation to the novel?
If you’re coming to see Moby Dick the story you won’t be disappointed, but it is more of a mistelling, really. We try our hardest to tell the story, but we do get quite distracted. It darts into very unpredictable areas – one of them being the fact that I’m a woman, so I shouldn’t really be in the story at all. And Jos has chosen Aitor [Basuri] to be the narrator and Moby Dick because of his thick Spanish accent and rather special grasp of the English language.
What dashes of Spymonkey style will you be adding?
There are dancing sailor numbers, a rap, a big wrestling routine, a cannibal who’s never learnt to climb stairs, an infertile mermaid who sings about how sad she is that her legs are glued together and a rendition of Bright Eyes. And a spectacular moment where the whole show goes underwater.
What’s the starting point for your shows?
It usually comes quite haphazardly. One of us suggests something and then we all jump on it. We’re quite a ‘yes’ company – we say yes to everything, a bit like a bunch of excitable puppies – which has its pros and cons. The seed of this idea came from Stephan Kreiss. He saw the film as a kid and used to play Moby Dick on the couch with his brother, so it had happy memories.
You’re working with a new director for the first time – Jos Houben, an original member of Complicite – has that changed your style?
It’s still very much a Spymonkey show but it seems to be a different kind of Spymonkey show – it’s more story driven and it’s also the first time we’ve chosen a pre-existing story. All our previous shows have been devised from scratch. It’s difficult as comedians and clowns to fix what we’re doing, but we’ve been learning a new discipline.
How did you first get involved in this kind of work?
I was originally a street performer. I went to Middlesex Poly and I did a street show in Covent Garden as my final degree show, and just got hooked. I loved the gypsy lifestyle – it seemed such a great way of combining travelling and performing. But I got a bit disheartened with the street. I ended up meeting Aitor and Toby [Park] working on a big outdoor theatre show in Switzerland. We came from a similar background – street, cabaret, comedy, clowning – and we missed the intimacy of the theatre, so we decided to do our own thing.