“I’m fucking up my favourite band…by playing in it” – Davey Lane, You Am I.
That is one of my favourite quotes from the You Am I documentary “The Cream and Crock” where Davey expressed his concern of not quite cutting the mustard when he first joined his favourite band. This kinda reflected how I felt about this summer. I have been a fan and friend of LA’s Sound And Fury for many years from touring a lot of the same Canadian Fringe Festivals (and more recently, the Australian Fringes) with them and so when they asked me to replace third troupe member Ryan for the Australian leg of their 2015 tour, I was firstly honoured, then excited and then absolutely terrified. S&F have been around as a troupe for over 17 years and have a strong following in Australia so I had big shoes to fill, two shows worth of lines to learn and a lot of people to try and impress. It was a really daunting task, but I love a challenge. I cut my teeth at Fringe World in Perth with a whirlwind week of performances of Hitchcocked and Hamlet & Juliet (insanely sandwiched between performances of my own show Trampoline) but it was really the Adelaide Fringe season of Hamlet & Juliet that I really started to find my feet. I started to feel more at home in the troupe, more comfortable improvising within the shows and trying out new jokes (mostly involving attempting to annoy Richard onstage) and putting my own goofy spin in the characters I played.
It was a whole new experience as an actor or improviser. We all have a similar sense of humour and while we’d all done a lot of improv but a S&F show is a whole different beast and it was a rewarding experience for me as a performer to challenge myself with something like this. It was important to me (and to the others) that I wasn’t just doing an impression of Ryan and the guys really made me like I had to the freedom to play around and make my spot in the troupe my own and I am forever grateful for that. The feedback from new, and perhaps more importantly, long time fans of S&F was overwhelmingly positive and it was lovely to be accepted as more than just “the new guy” or “not Ryan”.
Patrick and Richard, thank you both so much for all your hard work and for helping me feel so much part of the team. Ryan thanks for needing time to plan your wedding, you were very much missed this tour, but I’m sure glad I go to be the first ever Aussie Sound & Fury-er. I do hope we can all do it all again someday.
Some reviews, with a few mentions of me, not fucking up.
“We were also introduced to the filling-in Shane, found in Perth and more than capable of getting formidably silly in the best Sound & Fury tradition.” – Rip it up ★★★★
“Forget the nunnery; get thee to Bally tent in Gluttony, where Hamlet and Juliet plays nightly “ – InDaily
“Joining Maritzer and long-standing member Patrick Hercamp for their Australian tour is Perth local, Shane Adamczak. He fits right in, despite the clash of accents” – Glam Adelaide ★★★★
“Genuinely, laugh out loud funny” – Yaniism Blog
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