As a part of the 2022 Melbourne Fringe Festival Head First Acrobats present GODZ – a hedonistic, head-first dive into the lives of the ancient Gods of Olympus.
A truly epic show – the most highly reviewed show at the 2022 Adelaide Fringe Festival -performer Thomas Gorham says that creating the show was a very collaborative process. “Everyone has their own individual input on both their solo and the group scenes,” he says. “Overall management was mostly myself and Cal, (Callan Harris) the other director of Head First Acrobats.”
It took a full three months to create the show from inception to performance with the company starting in October at Circus Oz and training and creating every day until their first show in Perth in January.
Gorham says the circus collective has had the idea for a Greek god themed show since 2018. “We were tossing up between Greek gods and cowboys when we made our last show Railed. In the end we went with cowboys and Railed was a big hit,” he says of their highly lauded show that started at Perth Fringe World in 2019
“Since then I’ve been dying to create a Greek god themed show. The archetypes fit comedy shows so well, and the common ground of pop culture knowledge is fertile ground for great skits and commentary.”
Head First Acrobats are a multi-award-winning entertainment company that walks the tightrope between comedy and acrobatics, but geared at an adult audience. “Think Magic Mike meets Cirque du Soleil, but with slapstick,” says Gorham. “All of our shows have some narrative structure to them as well, so you never have the audience going “What the hell did I just watch??” … well sometimes they do that, but it’s in a good way!”
A seasoned performer having performed in over 20 countries, Gorham’s introduction to circus was through breakdancing and he still considers breakdancing to be his greatest influence and passion. “Since beginning circus and performing I have done a lot of hand to hand, tumbling and acrobatics, ” he says. “Over the years I have refined and dropped a lot of different areas to focus on Washington Trapeze and Breakdance- style acrobatics.”
Like many, Gorham acknowledges that Covid was a dark time for everybody but luckily big plans were in place for the company as they were busy buying their tent (The Vault) which they are currently performing in. “During those times we were hard at work planning the layout and making sure all the engineering was up to spec for a circus performance,” he says.
“For our acrobatic performers, some of them had gigs, others didn’t. We were all very excited to come together and create GODZ. But GODZ was born in the tail end of the pandemic, and getting to its premiere performance in WA was a nightmare at the start of the year. We flew from VIC to QLD to TAS and then to WA just to avoid covid restrictions. Luckily, we made it the whole way without a positive covid result.”
The boys from Head First Acrobats take their unique mix of storytelling, circus, and physical prowess to godlike proportions in this latest offering. Join Cupid (the God of Love), Hercules (the God of Strength) and Dionysus (the God of Wine) as they paint Ancient Greece red and bring you to the biggest party to hit Mount Olympus since 500 BCE.
Says Gorham, if you love comedy or acrobatics, or a gentle touch of stripping, GODZ is absolutely the show for you. If you don’t like those things… we’re going to work very hard to make you like them. Ha!
GODZ runs till October 23 and is a R18 show so don’t bring the kids.
https://melbournefringe.com.au/event/godz/
