The Concept

We are backstage. We are offstage. We are standing in the wings of the story. We are inviting you to help us to remember. We are pretending to be characters in a musical. We are pretending to be ourselves. We are pretending to be each other.

Michael Pinchbeck will work with his father - Tony Pinchbeck - to recreate the post-show party at which his parents met in December 1970. His mum was a nun. His Dad was a Nazi. It was an amateur dramatic version of The Sound of Music. At the post-show party, the men sang songs they had written backstage and the women danced. Arthur Hunter, who was playing Baron Elberfeld, collapsed leading to the end of the party and the beginning of Pinchbeck’s parents' relationship. It wasn't until afterwards they learned he had died.

The Post-Show Party Show starts at the end of the show and the beginning of the post-show party. Taking place somewhere between then and now, onstage and offstage, to the real-time soundtrack of The Sound of Music, the piece explores notions of performance and the nature of the father and son relationship. Reliving the real life event and revisiting the songs the men had written backstage, The Post Show Party Show asks what is professional and what is amateur, what is present and what is absent, what is dance and what is not dance.

Image: Julian Hughes