The quiet bastard

Part Dostoyevsky’s Notes From Underground, part Beckett,  LA Weekly. 30/10/03

“It looks real normal at first” she says. “He’s not going to scare you off immediately by yelling at you. He’s going to draw you in, then give you his perspective, which is bizzarre. But you’re already in there, so it’s too late to back out. He puts traumatic and horrifying events into forms that are familiar. You open your mouth, but you’re not sure whether to laugh or cry.” Martha Wilson, founder of Franklin Furnace, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, 12/10/2003.

The Quiet Bastard was originally a half hour performance/installation collaboration between writer / performer Oscar McLennan & visual and performance artist Anne Seagrave, commissioned by the 2001 Dublin Fringe Festival. Already familiar with some of McLennan’s earlier work, UCLA LIVE director, Dave Sefton, attended one of the performances while visiting Dublin, and was so impressed by the experience that he immediately commissioned an hour long touring version – and so’the director’s cut’ came into being.

TQB – DIRECTOR’S CUT is written and performed by Oscar McLennan, with original slides, video and soundworks by Anne Seagrave. It is a multimedia text based performance which presents a surreal vision of urban life in the 21st century. A jungle of entrepreneurs and a desert of the soul, with no room for the marginallsed. Our lonely performer, himself an unwanted offspring of the Celtic Tiger, ultimately finds freedom by way of the extraordinary creations that emerge from the film studio he secretly carries in his head. A unique expeience in live art performance. Unpredictably funny, sad and savagely surreal.

The Quiet Bastard – Director’s Cut was premiered as part of The
Dublin Fringe Festival 2003, at the City Art Centre, Dublin 22nd – 27th
October. It also featured as part of the UCLA Live season from
15th – 19th October 2003, at the McGowan Little Theatre, Los
Angeles.