Fred Deakin & Sita Pieraccini on inviting London to CLUB LIFE

Down at the Omnibus Theatre between the 12th and the 24th of November 2024, Fred Deakin, of Mercury and Brit-nominated electronica duo Lemon Jelly, is inviting audiences to experience CLUB LIFE. Directed by Sita Pieraccini, and produced by Davie Miller, the show promises ‘an immersive joyride’ through Deakin’s crazy clubland adventures in the 80s and 90s. You can expect two and a half hours of entertainment, one part theatrical show, one part club. Dancing is welcome, but not mandatory!

I was able to put a few questions to Fred and Sita during preparations for the London premiere of this 2023 Edinburgh Fringe-First-winning hybrid of club and theatre experience. Let’s dive in – suffice to say these creative souls were more than forthcoming…

Hi Folks! Can I begin by asking when the idea for Club Life first emerged, and how it evolved from an idea to an award-winning Fringe show?

Fred – I had the idea in lockdown when clubbing took more of a hit than any other art form: I wanted to honour the world of clubbing and celebrate the time, love and effort that I and others had put into those experiences. I remembered how much I loved those days (and nights!), what I had learned and the amazing community of clubbers, a real family that had now been fragmented by time and location. I’d already run a lot of club nights and didn’t want to just put on another one, and simply standing on stage and telling tales from those times also seemed too basic. Fortunately the idea of getting a cast involved and making the project a theatrical piece that merged the clubbing format with a more traditional stage/audience environment came to me. I then got in touch with my mate Davie Miller, ex of Fini Tribe and Neu!Reekie!, who used to help me with my club nights back in the day and who knows pretty much everyone in Scotland: we discussed the idea and he brought Sita into the project. Then we went through the process of putting a theatre show together which was all very new to me and a fantastic learning curve. We didn’t have a huge amount of resources so rehearsal time was limited but we managed to factor in a few scratch shows before the festival which were massive learning experiences for me. We then had the classic festival journey of having eight people at our first show (they all stayed for the full two and a half hours and six of them were dancing all night) before we were awarded the Fringe First mid-festival, after which we were the hot ticket in town and sold out the rest of our shows comfortably. What a ride! I’m sure our London premiere run at Omnibus will be just as intense.

Has the process of converting personal history into a show been a rewarding one?

Sita – It’s been really exciting working with such rich starting material and seeing how the creatives have responded to the ideas. The stylist, Laura Lees, has done an incredible job with kitting out the actors for each club scene. Laura was at all of Fred’s clubs. She really understands what it means to wear those clothes and they give the actors so much to work with. The incredible work Cameron Gleave did with Fred’s graphic design with animating them, creating glorious video wall moments, has been so much fun. Working with them and the brilliant cast of young actors to bring this story to life has been really rewarding.

Did you have 80’s/90’s archetypes in mind when casting the show?

Sita – Not at all. It was really important to me to find performers who would bring themselves to this piece and have fun playing with the material. I wanted them to bring their life in clubbing or what dancing and music meant to them to this piece. I wanted to create a Club Life gang as you would if you were going out clubbing regularly. We were lucky to have some archival footage from some of Fred’s clubs which gave us a lot to draw on in the audition process. I was really inspired by the Edinburgh DIY ethos from that time and the playful characters of Fred’s past as opposed to a generic 80’s or 90’s archetype.

“I wanted to honour the world of clubbing and celebrate the time, love and effort that I and others had put into those experiences.”

Was participation always a part of the plan?

Fred – Yes; I had realised from many years running club nights that we wouldn’t be able to simply expect the audience to get up on cue: club nights take an hour or two to warm up and that’s part of the experience, but if I was going to recreate eight 80s/90s club experiences in two and a half hours we didn’t have time for each of them to go through that process. The solution was to get a cast involved to play the part of the clubbers on each different night, and the joy of this project has been playing with the potential interactions between cast and audience that emerge as a result of this. At the beginning of the show, we don’t spoon-feed the audience and deliberately make it a little challenging for them to get up and dance, so they can remember that experience of going to your first party or club, watching other people dance and wondering if you are brave enough to join them. The nuances of opening the space out gradually have been beautifully developed by Sita and the cast and it’s a joy to watch, from all angles!

How has the relationship between you two developed as the show has progressed?

Sita – This is my first time working on a piece of this scale and complexity and I feel like we have both learned a lot in the process so it feels really humbling and exciting to learn alongside someone as talented, experienced and brilliant as Fred. He has really opened his heart and story of his life in this show so it’s really special. There’s been a lot of laughing and dancing together as I’m always there for all the shows as an incognito cast member. We have also become unofficial parents to the younger cast! As we migrate south to the big smoke this November for our run at the Omnibus, it will be the first time for most of our Scottish cast performing in London – so it’s going to be a wild experience for them. They are all brilliant and so individual. Proud Club Life auntie and uncle indeed.

” It was really important to me to find performers who would bring themselves to this piece and have fun playing with the material.”

There’s a continuing public conversation over whether British club culture is dying or evolving – what’s your feeling?

Fred: Clubs are continually evolving and there’s always going to be new developments as each generation discovers the art form for themselves and makes it their own. I was lucky to see the UK clubbing scene of the 80s and 90s emerge pretty much from a blank canvas after the scorched earth of punk had blasted everything else away: as a result there were lots of options available to us that had never been explored before. I think it’s fair to say that UK clubbing has become more corporate and monetised over the last twenty years and perhaps it’s harder to be original these days but there will always be innovators at ground level and more power to them.

Did your Fringe audiences surprise you in any way?

Sita – There was a group of ten 17-year-olds who came to see the show earlier on during our fringe run. They got up for every club but always started off as a huddle in the middle of the space before gradually spreading out to dance. It was such a genuine and authentic response to the stage becoming a dance floor.

There were also some that had their own memories from those club nights which were really good to hear and talk about at the show too.

The cast performs in a way that embraces audience connection whilst also keeping the anchor of Fred’s story alive. It was always really great to hear afterwards how much their interactions had affected and enhanced the audience’s experience of being part of the piece in a positive way.

Having made a show about your 20th-century adventures Fred, would you do it all again if you could?

Fred: Damn right: I have no regrets. But I am also particularly enjoying my current 21st-century adventures. There’s always a lost horizon to be discovered!

Featured Image: CLUB LIFE poster