Of all the industries to struggle under the strain of Covid-19, theatres have been uniquely imperilled by an absence of live performances and venue space. But this absence has coincided with the creation of new spaces of online performance in which groundbreaking theatre has thrived.
Laura Killeen is an actor, writer, and co-artistic director at Degenerate Fox, a theatre company at the forefront of Islington’s arts scene which has brought a distinct, avant-garde brand to online theatre.
“It’s so amazing that even though we’re all so far apart from each other, what we’re doing is still a community-building activity,” she says.
Performing at Islington’s Rosemary Branch Theatre in normal times, Degenerate Fox is the only UK-based aficionados of the fabulously named Neo-Futurism – a form of theatre based on authenticity and realism on stage.
“There are four rules of Neo-Futurism: we are us, we are here, the time is now, and we are doing what we’re actually doing,” Killeen tells me from her South London home. “Which, distilled down, means that we are always ourselves on stage.”
“Unless I stick a big sign on me that says Donald Trump, and a blonde wig [and] you know who I’m playing. But otherwise, I’m always Laura Killeen… if I down a glass of red wine, it’s really red wine. If I’m bleeding, it’s really blood.”
The format for my conversation with Killeen – Zoom – has served as the medium of her theatre work for over a year. Online events have brought unprecedented restrictions for performance art, particularly for experimental theatre. However, they have also provided new opportunities for Killeen and her colleagues.
“We’re all so used to our canvas being the stage,” she says. “But now we’re performing on Zoom essentially, and I’m in control of this box, I’m in control of this lens. The audience sees me through the angle it’s at, and how the space is dressed. There’s been this transition of writing with the language of film, rather than the language of stage, or a kind of balance between the two of them.”
Novel ways of approaching theatre are nothing new to Killeen, who began her stage career at the Redbridge Youth Theatre Workshop, near where she grew up in South Woodford, north east London. Starting aged 14, Killeen says her first experience of drama was a far cry from the pantomimes and family-friendly musicals of many schools.
“The first show I did with [the workshop] was a play called Machinal by Sophie Treadwell,” she says. “It’s about a woman who ends up going to the electric chair, she goes mad, she cheats on her husband, it’s this incredibly dramatic but amazing play.”
Immersion in theatre from an early age was formative for Killeen, and solidified her ambition to make performing arts her career. She wasn’t persuaded, however, that formal training was the way to pursue this ambition. “I thought going to drama school meant being turned into the carbon copy of someone else’s idea of an actor. We’re all very precocious at 18 years old,” she laughs.
Instead, Killeen continued acting in London, taking on a number of courses, before stumbling on an acting technique that would prove hugely influential in her career: The Meisner Technique. It is described by its eponymous creator Sandford Meisner as “living truthfully under imaginary circumstances.” This led Killeen to enter a new vein of immersive acting, and courses learning to master the technique.
This technique in turn led Killeen to move to New York aged 21 to take up a place at the Neighbourhood Playhouse, a theatre school on Manhattan’s East 54th Street. “[It was] this skinny black building with a big red door, and I had no idea what I was letting myself in for,” she recalls.
After two years of study at the school, Killeen remained in New York for another five years, acting, directing, and producing theatre. Together with a friend (an “incredible drag queen” called Penny Lou Chrysler), she founded a late night queer variety show in New York featuring a plethora of unconventional performance art from drag acts and comedians, to acrobats and contortionists.
“It was a really beautiful melting pot,” she recalls. “It felt really gratifying to be able to give people a platform to do what they love, because maybe what they love isn’t traditionally seen as, you know, performance.”
Killeen’s eclectic experience in New York came to an end when she decided that she needed a change, and a place to set up home permanently. “I might be projecting my own experience onto some universality that doesn’t exist,” she says. “But I think a lot of us in our twenties invest short term, short term, short term and kind of flip from one thing to another. And there comes a time in our late twenties… I just felt I should be investing, I should be laying down some form of roots.”
Returning to London, Killeen earned a master’s degree at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and Birkbeck, University of London. “I just never thought that I’d go to university, I never thought I would do higher education,” she says. “But I did, and I’m really glad I did because it gave me a lot of confidence in myself.”
It was while working and performing in London in the years after her degree that Killeen discovered Neo-Futurism for the first time. Hearing word of an innovative new performance method from friends, Killeen attended a show at the Rosemary Branch Theatre. “I watched it and it was the most energetic, diverse, creative, informative, moving hour I had ever experienced on stage,” she recalls. “And I thought, ‘I wanna do that, that is exciting.’”
The event proved a turning point in Killeen’s career after she was invited by the performers to audition for a role in the group. After being accepted, she became a founding member of Degenerate Fox and embarked on a series of Neo-Futurist projects.
“I’m able, once again, to give a platform to performance and voices that might not otherwise find a home for them,” she says. “Just like I was all those years ago with my late night queer variety show.”
One show which encapsulates the spirit of this novel theatre form is The Dirty 30, which will run online on 23 and 24 April. The show consists of 30 two-minute plays over the course of an hour, their order chosen at random by the audience. In both live and online performances the result is a chaotic, enthralling experience. “We never know what order the 30 plays are going to be [in],” says Killeen. “Which makes doing them in an hour very challenging. It’s very gamified. It’s a real challenge every time we do it.”
Despite the difficulties of performing over Zoom, Killeen says that in many ways, online events have brought Degenerate Fox closer to their audience. “We’ve got people who are able to see our show for the first time because we’ve got less overheads,” she says. “So it’s cheaper to buy a ticket and you don’t have to travel anywhere.”
With the UK government gradually easing restrictions, the next few months may allow an unsettled industry some respite in turbulent times. Indoor household mixing, including theatres and arts venues, will return on 17 May at the earliest.
Degenerate Fox will continue to run their shows online over the spring and summer months, but Killeen, who has recently trained as a Covid vaccinator, has a host of plans when restrictions ease.
In addition to her work with the company, Killeen is a theatre maker and avid playwright. “There’ll be times where I’ll be walking down the street and I’ll be like, ‘that’s a play, that’s a play, that’s a play,’” she says. “I’ll have like 16 ideas in the space of an hour, and I won’t be able to write them fast enough. And then there are other plays, which I have taken six weeks to write from, you know, the inception of the kernel of the idea to actually getting it on the page.”
When asked if she has a process for her work she says: “Living is the process – and then sitting down and getting the shit on the page. Don’t get it right, get it written.”
She will direct another show, Godot is a Woman, which will hopefully run live at The Pleasance Theatre in Islington in June. Killeen, like many in theatre, is thrilled by the prospect of a return to live shows.
“I’m going to be back in a rehearsal room in May with actors and producers and stage managers and oh my god, I cannot wait,” she says. “And performing this beautiful piece of theatre, which is a really great play.”
“For Degenerate Fox, I think we’ll just see how it goes. We’ve all got to feel safe and comfortable.”
Degenerate Fox will present online performances of ‘The Dirty 30 II: Revolution’ on 23 and 24 April at 9pm. The shows feature 30 two-minute plays chosen in a random order by the audience over the course of an hour.
On 4 and 5 June, the company will present PRIDE, “a joyous celebration of LGBTQIA+ pride”. It will be Degenerate Fox’s third set of pride shows and its first entirely online.
You can find Laura Killeen on Instagram and her website.
You can find Degenerate Fox on their website, on YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram.
