We caught up with Georgia Bruce, writer and performer of Bruce ahead of 96 Festival next month.
Tell us a little about your vision for the show and what you hope audiences will be able to take away from it?
So I’m intending the show to be a (somewhat ridiculous) mix of characters, songs and stories, some funny, some serious, some halfway in between. I only really have one hope and that is that both I and the audience (but mainly I) will just have a ruddy good time and at the end we can all hang out and exchange funny anecdotes about childhood pets and what GCSEs we did and what our favourite harmony is in Dolly Parton and Sonya Isaac’s seminal cover of Louvin Brothers classic The Angels Rejoiced.
You say this production is a step en route to the Fringe, tell us about how you envision the show to develop for Fringe and how it feels to be making your Fringe debut?
Well, this year I’m planning to take my first ever solo show to the Fringe, which is obviously insane because it’s hard enough doing it with your mates alongside you. So if anyone reading this is planning on being there, please come see my show because I’ll definitely be on the look-out for audience members/a bit of company/long lasting and meaningful relationships.
Mainly though I’m very excited for my debut at the Fringe, because I’m seeing it like my own personal month-long debutante ball, most of which I’ll spend cowering under an umbrella outside the Bedlam Theatre, nursing a £2.50 pint and thinking about how I am both eligible and single. Am planning my outfits already (spoiler alert: very high heels and nothing else).
Omnibus Theatre’s 96 Festival is harkening back to the historic pride party on Clapham common in 1996, 22 years ago. What progression would you like to see (politically and culturally) for the LGBTQ+ community in the next 22 years?
More snogs for everyone.
Let’s talk about Dolly Parton. What’s your fav Dolly Moment?
A single fav??? Ludicrous question, impossible to answer. A few highlights include: the time she headlined Glastonbury and made up a song about the mud whose lyrics were “mud, mud, mud, mud, up to our bums in all this crud” and then sang it in front of one hundred thousand people; the time someone found a lost dog at that same Glastonbury, called it Dolly, and when they couldn’t find its owner, she offered to adopt it; the time I went with my parents to see her perform at the O2 and every single other member of the audience was an old man wearing a feather boa and I’ve never felt so at home; the time I first heard Coat of Many Colors; the time she came up with the zinger to end all zingers: “I was the first woman to burn my bra – it took the fire department four days to put it out.”
