Not even a car crash could thwart Justin Gaurav Murgai’s unstoppable flair for theatrics
It wouldn’t be fair to say that Phoenixation has survived years of toil and struggle in a desperate bid to begin their theatre company. They haven’t. In fact artistic director Justin Gaurav Murgai advertised for players a little less than two months ago. It seems starting a theatre company from scratch and putting on a fully-fledged performance is all in a few weeks work.
But this isn’t the first time Justin has flirted with the stage. At four years old he began studying musical-theatre dance. By 15, after years of dedication, dance was the career he dreamt of, planned for, banked on. A tragic car accident splintered his dreams, but not his spirit. He decided to stick with theatre, disappearing behind the scenes, to work as a scenographer. Phoenixation is his new dream, its name – inspired by the Phoenix, a bird that rises from ashes to live again, is apt for such a survivor. Today he sits with his marketing manager Nina Fussing, both are animated, chattering easily about Fairytale Soup, Phoenixation’s first show, a Shrek style comedy which arrives at the Fringe on September 7th.
Justin placed an advert in June asking interested parties to meet at the fringe. Four people showed, but that didn’t curb enthusiasm, and the group booked a performance space for September. The cosy quartet never guessed that in weeks the company would have snowballed to 28 members: “We did have an open door policy,” Justin says. It might have helped that Phoenixation’s only joining requirement was enthusiasm - something that the effervescent Justin has in bundles. Nina believes a sunny attitude attracted potential performers - Justin’s optimism is infectious, she says, and probably the recipe for Phoenixation’s speedy successes. He has sparky ideas and “We all follow,” she says laughing. One of them was an unconventional idea for raising funds – plodding the streets. Surprisingly fruitful, many were eager to help the fledgling company. The majority of sponsors came through cold calling, with private benefactors and public advertisers donating enough cash to fund the entire project – a relief for the not-for-profit company.
Pure hard work pays off – the gang committed themselves to rehearsing three times a week and has stuck rigidly to the deal, juggling jobs and families. Holding the motley crew together – including a business grad in charge of props and a cop doubling as stage manager - is a very experienced director, Matchy Choi and co-director, Brian Greytak. Matchy is a regular on the local Chinese theatre circuit and Brian works with children’s theatre Chunky Onion productions. Even so, as the actors tumble into slapstick scenes they often collapse into fits of laughter, “its mental, ”laughs Justin, unconcerned - a stress-free atmosphere is one of his biggest working conditions and he says he can’t remember a time when tempers flared – there just hasn’t been time.
Justin, who has taken roles as producer and lighting director in addition to heavyweight title artistic founder and director says his schedule is crammed: “nine am till nine am the next morning and all over again,” he says smiling – it seems nothing manages to slow him down. Though its common even for experienced theatre companies to run into obstacles, the couple sits stumped, trying to come up with examples of theirs. “There hasn’t been anything huge,” they say, sharing mystified glances. Continuing with upbeat banter it is easy to believe that they would never let minor things such as problems hold them back. Even stumbling upon the script in an Internet search proved a spot of luck – not many offer parts for large casts – Fairytale Soup has 16. A comedy tour of storybookville, old bedtime favourites from Cinderella to the Big Bad Wolf all make appearances. Blonde smiling Nina, playing the lead, is Fairyland’s nicest witch.
“A comedy is fun,” Justin beams, explaining the choice, “I wanted to do a pantomime in summer.” It was also a perfect fit for a cast aged between 21-60, with varied experience of producing and performing plays. Now in the final stages of rehearsal, as lines are reeled back and forth with confidence and last minute positions are memorized, Justin is preparing to see his vision become reality. But Fairytale Soup is not an end result for Phoenixation, the artistic director, who hopes to build the company into a troupe that performs regularly encompassing arts workshops, sees the laugh-a-minute show as starting point for, “a real community theatre.”
Looking at his face, eyes wide in excitement, there isn’t a doubt that he will give his dream everything he has. The vision may be grand, but the aim is simple: to make people smile.
Fairytale Soup: The Not So Good, The Almost Bad and the Not Really Ugly will be performed on September 7 – 9 at the Fringe Club.
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