Chris Green is BUSKTED

MEDIA RELEASE

Chris Green is BUSKTED
21 November 2013

A year after Chris Green was hitting Wellington headlines, when the vagaries of Novopay saw him rely on his busking income; this busking has inspired his new Fringe Festival solo show.

BUSKTED will premiere at BATS theatre capturing the colourful, quirky and at times crazy characters he has met on Cuba Street over this past year.

It has been an action packed first year as a full time performer for Green. Since relinquishing his teaching career there have been five seasons of his successful first solo show Coaltown Blues, a season of Phantom of the Opera, a two week season on stage in Tokyo, an invitation to perform Coaltown Blues at the Edinburgh Festival and, of course, the busking.

This hectic schedule meant Green had to step away from a busy Wellington scene for a while to get BUSKTED written. Amongst the misty hills of Murchison where he escaped for a spell, the pace and routine of life have thrown the Wellington street scene into even greater relief. Having breakfast with lambs, ponies and goats outside the window is a far cry from the characters who inhabit the BUSKTED world of Green’s imagination.

Young Lucky
Bench huddled raw testosterone
Makin' love there
To his smooth bodied, touch me baby, mobile phone
You just missed Ol' Stoop Street Walker
And Profane Constant Talker
And self made Stan whose dollar down
Affords invasion of my ground,
Entitles him to stand too near
Berate me with his
Boutique beer breath, nicotine stained rhetoric (Another Song on Cuba – BUSKTED)

Through it all the joy of singing resonates.

“Having started busking as an adventure, and continued it from necessity, I have grown to absolutely love it” says Green. “Its immediacy and intimacy is so refreshing”

Fittingly as a playful celebration of Cuba Street life, BUSKTED will also be performed by Green in a 20 minute street version on the Cuba Mall stage in the days leading up to its full BATS premiere.

The full version is sixty minutes in the songspiel style Green has enjoyed so much in Mervyn Thompson’s Coaltown Blues – with its total reliance on the actor to create character and scene changes; the ten songs often providing an ironic counterpoint to the dialogue and action.

BUSKTED is on nightly for four performances at BATS Theatre from FridayFebruary 21 to Monday February 24. Performances start at 9.30 each night with bookings available at BATS Theatre.

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