Weaponized

FoolishPeople is proud to announce the production of their first feature film Strange Factories, a psychological thriller written by John Harrigan and directed by Richard Webb and John Harrigan.

In an unnamed country, a storyteller possessed by an idea for a new fable searches for four lost friends, all refugee performers of a theatre destroyed in a mysterious fire. Sam, who is obsessed with dangerous stage effects, Jessica, a glamourous femme fatale, Hettie, a clown who hides a secret and Rose, who has sacrificed her life to art.

Victor believes their unique skills will help him complete work on a story he fears is fast becoming a paradox.

He finds his friends in a remote, pagan village founded by Stronheim; the owner of a Strange Factory hidden deep in the local countryside, infamous for the frequencies of sound it emits. Inadvertently, Victor enters into a dangerous pact when Stronheim makes a proposition to build a new theatre for the performers, if Victor reaches the heart of his story in time for it to be performed at the village festival.

The key to the group’s success lies in unravelling the truth of a mysterious fiction and learning how it relates to the customs of the villagers: bizzare rites practiced under influence of a hallucinogenic effluence siphoned out of the Strange Factory and served at the local pub.

Emotional geography and psychologically fractured history merge in a landscape haunted with dreams and nightmares of kidnapped actors, hideous monsters, invisible escape artists and ghosts of audiences past, present and future.

All milestones lead to Strange Factories.


‘Emma’ by Bettina Fung

Principal photography on Strange Factories will take place in a remote location in Prague through September-October 2011, and will utilise crowd sourcing and other traditional routes to fund the project.

As FoolishPeople enters new realms, our ethos remains the same for our audience: Static consumption is not possible, active engagement and participation is vital and absolutely necessary.

In coming months and throughout 2012, the production of Strange Factories will be a convergence of new experiences that enables our audience to explore the immersive mystery unfolding at the crossroads of fiction and creation.

John Harrigan, Artistic Director of FoolishPeople says: “The heart of this story is haunted, Stronheim sits, waiting and watching. I’m excited, but also terrified to enter into the world of Strange Factories. Stronheim’s factory has now been switched on. The audience’s role in this story is more important than any previous FoolishPeople project, their experience is central to how this ritual unfolds.”

Richard Webb comments: “Strange Factories is a product of its own hermetic world; a skewed, displaced world with a unique internal sense of logic, reality and time. It is my job as co-director to help pull it out of this world and realise this creation visually and, more importantly, experientially. It is at once both a tremendous challenge and an experience I am very much looking forward to living.”

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CORE CREATIVE TEAM
John Harrigan, Richard Webb, Lucy Harrigan, Tereza Kamenicka, Bettina Fung, P. Emerson Williams, Rachael Blyth and Xanadu Xero.

About FoolishPeople 
FoolishPeople create theatre, collaborative events, live art, books, music & film. They curate and engineer immersive experiences that have the power to initiate an expansion in consciousness within the individual, for positive change using their developed practice Theatre of Manifestation. They have produced their work at venues such as the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Arcola Theatre and the Horse Hospital in London, toured internationally to America and Amsterdam and worked with companies such as Secret Cinema and the BBC. 

For further information, please visit FoolishPeople.org

About John Harrigan: 
John Harrigan is a writer, director, performer and artist. He is also known as the founder of FoolishPeople and a contemporary magician whose work centres on the creation of immersive ritual theatre, installation art, books and film that aim to raise a numinous experience within the witness. 

For further information, please visit johnharrigan.com

About Richard Webb: 
Richard Webb is an artist and director who produces exploratory meditations on the issues of power, hierarchy, identity and censorship within the modern world. Richard completed his degree in Media Arts at Sheffield Hallam University and obtained an MA in Fine Art at University of Brighton. His work has been exhibited at venues including The Whitechapel Art Gallery, The Agency Gallery, Freud Museum, The Horse Hospital and Benjamin Franklin House. He has also worked as Assistant Curator at De La Warr Pavilion. 

For further information, please visit rawebb.com

For further information for press, please email Lucy Harrigan: lucena@foolishpeople.org

strangefactories.com

METAPHYSICS AND MECHANICS IN THE NUDE, WITH SEX AND DRUGS!

   

The Sparky Show read by author Xanadu Xero in an exploding dossier of words and photography of a doomed and perfect relationship, retrofitted with psilocybin. A report from the trenches of love post culture, mid-life, reminiscent in its gonzo style and ‘take no prisoners’ attitude to Hunter S. Thompson. Not your average empty-nest Beverly Hills Mom.

Published By WEAPONIZED

Soundtrack by Choronzon.

Weaponized is brought to you by FoolishPeople. John Harrigan is writer, dramatic catalyst and performer alongside Lucy Allin and the rest of the FoolishPeople cast. Atmosphere, electronic voice phenomena and the occasional character sketch are provided by P. Emerson Williams. The scope of the Weaponized ranges from darkly humorous vignettes to claustrophobic occult horror. From monologues to full on audio theatre.

FoolishPeople have produced work in prestigious cultural venues such as the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, Arcola Theatre and the Horse Hospital, historical buildings like the Galleries of Justice in Nottingham, internationally to America and Amsterdam and worked for clients such as the BBC. The FoolishPeople core collective features artists from England, Czech Republic, Sweden & America, and they also collaborate with many artists worldwide who specialise in a broad range of media.

Listen to or download show @alterati.com

Virtual Factory recently Interviewed Weaponized Author Xanadu Xero. The full interview is now online…

Xanadu my Hero, Buying Bewilderment First there was the cult song and now the high-priestess of underground art emerges from the afterglow of self-annihilation with The Sparky Show.

Xanadu! Welcome to London! What do you make of our version of the city that goes to bed at 10 pm?



My dreams of “Swinging London” are dashed, but that might be the reason artists are so much more accomplished and interesting here.

Can you recall an exact moment when you decided to become a writer?

I always wanted to be a writer, but I never thought I could do it. I got bad grades, I was un-coordinated, no one liked me, I had braces with springs. What I said was often met with an umbraged “You think that’s FUNNY?” I had to run after school because my parents thought I was fat.

It was sad because I really liked pretentious ‘author’ photos with curling smoke and the whole café/Opium thing. And black – I always wore (wear) black anyway because I hate shopping.  So… except for my body and brain, it was a fit.

CUT TO: Some years hence. After three college drop outings, I secured employment as a ‘reader’ for NBC. (Nineteen year old drop-outs chose their scripts.) 

I ‘covered’ scripts by Big Bux Writers with agents - some had managers, too! People took them to restaurants and paid! And yet… almost everything I read was AWFUL, like I’d rather slit my wrists than read Act Three. 

It was then that I had the satori: I Can Write As Badly As That!

Was your first project a script?

Yes, a TV (‘Made For Television’) movie about a horny middle aged woman in crisis (HAHA.) I was 23. When I met with The Network (BIG DAY!) to Pitch/Meet’n’Greet in my sassy classy ensemble, I chirped the Producer-instructed blip on cue: “I’m going to make it really sexy.” 

Screenwriting is the perfect career choice for uneducated, inexperienced youth. Those traits actually give you an inside track. Depression’s a plus. More if you’re a guy though, unless you’ve got big tits.

I never asked how long a TVM script should be, so I turned in 140 pages. I got screamed at, got the drift, cut it down. It was *instantly* made. I jizzed from GIMPIN to PIMPIN, presto.



You have a distinctly unique writing style, can you tell me how it developed?

I rue my writing style as it’s a direct result of Who I Am, and there’s no overstating how much pain that has caused me. 

Basically, I just natter to myself and write it down, then comb it to pop bubbles of flatulence.

Do you feel that writing has helped you frame and deal with emotional pain?

I’m actually a happy person. I am overjoyed by a pot of pansies. I’m completely happy until some better, smarter person gyrates into my face barking bout something I wrote/said/did/vibed. I’m autistic here, shocked at the response. I can’t process a reason for the disdain, I’m clueless, and so I kill again.

There really doesn’t seem to be any separation between your writing and your human nature. This honesty is powerfully portrayed through your work. What is the cost to you as an artist to maintain such a rare quality?

I’d like to claim ‘honesty’ as A Brave Decision In Service Of Truth, but I’d say I’m ‘honest’ because I have zip else to write about. I was a stay-at-home mom for eighteen years which ensures a short list of shenanigans. 

I will add however - since I strived to resist and cannot - that my brother the Illuminati Pin-Up Boy and his Kneel-4-Christ wife have excluded me completely from their children’s lives, despite proof I am wonderous with kids. 

I think Fartbrain (bro) got bent out of shape when I opined I was ashamed of his gusto in eroding The First World. I know the Rib’s mad cauz she caught me making fun of her ‘theme outfits’ - but come on. A tens-of-thousand$ designer statement (plus bling) devoted to ‘seashells’ is funny. It just is. I didn’t say stuff like THE VATICAN – LIKE A BATH HOUSE WITH FRANKINCENSE! in front of her or anything. Come to think of it, keeping the kids from me ain’t overly Christ-like, now izzit?

‘The Sparky Show’ explores the relationship you had with Sparky in a brutal and honest fashion. How did you find the experience of revisiting that time in your life and what has it revealed to you?

I didn’t really ‘revisit’ ‘The Sparky Show’, I’m still winding down. 

The last four years have smashed/re-forged my perspectives like plates on a Julian Schnabel painting, if Julian Schnabel paintings weren’t pieces of shit.

I had to accept while writing this that, much to my dis-ease, I don’t know myself.

I absolutely believe now that it’s easy to fall through the cracks and it’s easy to die. It’s easy to live a sad life. Childhood can strap you down with no ‘safe’ word. Real people draw short straws and suffer a lifetime, brilliant people, like Sparky.  YOU TOO could end up in the pirhana moat. Any Number Can Win.

You grew up in Beverly Hills, your friends were the children of ‘Hollywood Royalty’, what place does this period of history hold in your mind?

You are a gentleman not to put snigger before ‘Royalty’ but also, comme toujours, compactly wise. ‘Royalty’ are smelly, poorly dressed, inbred people who rip us off & subjugate us because we let them. WE deem them, inexplicably, ABOVE US because we’re lazy and no one wants to be front line for change. Their ABOVENESS is our Voluntary Collective Hallucination.

We bray we’re the most intelligent mammals on Earth. I posit, con brio, au contraire. I’ve read, zillion times, ‘talking chimp has scientists baffled’. Gosh.

I know you are but what am I?

Too many narcissists spoil the broth. 

You know that river in India where families frolic and bathe next to half cremated bodies (wood $) detached skin, heads? Hollywood was like that.

But there were wonderful things I deeply miss. Manners. Trust – before ‘trust’ was stupid. Beauty. Conversation. Gratitude. Pride in expressing one’s self through hospitality. Intact nuclear familes - for a while there.

I watched The Sixties crash that one, another smooth move by the Left!





Weaponized celebrates the publication of The Sparky Show by Xanadu Xero and P. Emerson Williams this coming Sunday the 14th of November at the Horse Hospital.  Xanadu Xero and P. Emerson Williams will be in attendance, they will be reading and signing copies of The Sparky Show published by Weaponized.

We have a few tickets remaining, email tickets@weaponized.net to reserve a place on the guest list.

For all those folks in LA, you can now pick up a copy of The Sparky Show from our LA stockist, the wonderful Hennessey + Ingalls Art + Architecture Bookstore.

Santa Monica Store: Hennessey + Ingalls
Art + Architecture Bookstore
214 Wilshire Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90401
Mon-Sun: 10:00am - 8:00pm
Phone: 310-458-9074 
Fax: 310-394-2928

NOW OPEN!
Hollywood Store:

Hennessey + Ingalls
Art + Architecture Bookstore
Space 15 Twenty
1520 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Suite 8 
Los Angeles, CA 90028
Mon-Fri: 11:00am - 8:00pm
Sat & Sun: 10:00am - 8:00pm
Phone: 323-466-1256 
Fax: 323-466-1362