Rich Jay has performed around the world and will be bringing his live performance to Adelaide for the 2021 Adelaide Fringe Festival. Sam About Town was lucky enough to have a chat and find out what it’s all about and why we should get excited!
SAT: Thanks for your time Rich. You are an accomplished and experienced performer, however you haven’t performed at the Adelaide Fringe before. I have to ask, what took you so long?!
RJ: Good question! Well, I haven’t lived in Australia since 2007, apart from one attempt at returning home in 2018 when I worked at Movie World on the Gold Coast. But I wasn’t happy on the Gold Coast, so I left again. I’m much happier in Adelaide, the city I was born in, and am honoured to finally be part of the Fringe!
What took me so long? I guess I kept getting these amazing opportunities overseas that I couldn’t pass up. Australia is an amazing country and my time away has made me appreciate it even more. But while I was young and dumb, I figured I’d make the most of my chances abroad.
SAT: Did you have Adelaide Fringe in your plans for a while and what made you decide the time was right to venture over to this neck of the woods?
RJ: I didn’t have it in my plans at all to be honest. I was performing on cruise ships when the pandemic hit. I’m just glad I didn’t get stuck in the middle of the ocean! I actually came back to Adelaide because my Dad is here and his health is on the decline. I wanted to spend time with him before the inevitable.
When I came back, I joined the local stand up circuit and was encouraged by Preachrs Podcast founder, Benjamin Mackay, to deliver my own show. If not for his insistence, I probably wouldn’t have considered it.
SAT: Your show, ‘Being Rich but Dying Trying’ is presented by Preachrs Podcast OnLine & OnStage. How did you become involved with them and for us not in the industry, can you explain what their role is in the process?
RJ: I met Benjamin while performing around the city and we quickly hit it off. He’s an absolute whiz in the industry and has performed and produced shows in Adelaide Fringe for 11 years! I didn’t realise how lucky I was at first, then I noticed he was hand-picked to be part of the Honey Pot delegates that Fringe Organisation recruit to offer assistance to performers and venues.
As a first-timer, Preachrs Podcast’s expertise becomes invaluable. They take care of all the behind-the-scenes work involved with putting on a show. Basically everything except writing and performing the show — that’s my job!
SAT: I’m keen to hear more details about your show, but first may I ask you about the practicalities of planning a show with the COVID-19 restrictions and uncertainty. What sort of challenges did you face?
RJ: Well there’s always the fear that it’s not going to go ahead! I think I’d cry if that happened, I’ve put so much effort into this already. The next biggest challenge is not being able to preview my show as readily. In a normal year, this pre-Fringe season is when performers present previews in order to fine-tune their show. We can’t do that as easily, but I’ll be doing at least two full-length previews in January for that purpose.
We’re lucky in Adelaide that the whole city isn’t shut down like some parts of the world. We still have an arts scene happening if you look hard enough. My friends abroad complain to me about the complete lack of entertainment available at the moment. That would be really tough.
SAT: You have performed all round the world in locations including, LA, London, Berlin, Cape Town, Tokyo, Moscow and I understand you also visited Malaysia frequently as a teenager. You must have so many stories to tell. Do you draw upon these experiences in your show?
RJ: Absolutely! The struggle is picking which stories to tell! Yeah, I’ve been around the block and love sharing the craziness of the world with anyone who’ll listen. Especially at this time, while we’re confined against our will. My audiences can live vicariously through the travels I’ve been fortunate enough to do.
SAT: As well as the stories, can you tell us about the other elements of live performance that are intertwined in the performance?
RJ: Yeah, I’ve tried to include an array of different elements. It’s a comedy show at its core, so of course there’ll be jokes. I’ve also written a few songs specifically for this show. They have a comedic element — one of them is called Racism Is Dumb, ‘coz it is! One of them is a rap, haha, so I bought a loop pedal in order to lay down a simple beat in some amateur beatbox-style and will construct a song in front of your eyes.
I also love poetry, so I wrote some comedic poems. They’re pretty basic, rhyming-couplets sort of poems, but they’re fun and they break up the monotony of a standard stand-up structure. There’s one about online dating, which, in my experience, can be a blessing and a curse!
SAT: I’m sure you won’t want to give all the secrets away, but I’m so curious – being chased by an elephant in Botswana! That’s not your everyday experience. Can you share a bit about that?
RJ: Sure, well in 2017 I rode a motorbike across Africa — from Cape Town to Berlin. It was a pretty mental experience and took me 8 months to cover 37,000kms. I ran into all sorts of challenges: I got hit by a truck, had a gun pulled in my face, blew a gasket in the middle of nowhere and was chased by a big Bull elephant that I’m pretty sure was drunk! Botswana is known for not having any fences, so the animals are truly wild! It’s the only country I was pleaded not to wild-camp in. For my own safety!
I just wanna say, I had good experiences in Africa as well, but it’s funny how we instinctively want to share our hardships. I learnt more from having my bike impounded at the Egyptian border than I did from drinking out of a coconut on a beach in Mozambique!
SAT: You lived in Berlin for many years and hosted your own radio show. Was this in English or German? And have you performed any live shows in German? Can you tell us more about this, what you love about Berlin and how this experience has influenced your work? (at this point SAT stops firing questions and acknowledges she’s slightly too enthusiastic about the creative, amazing city that is Berlin and will stop living vicariously through Rich).
RJ: You want to live there don’t you? Berlin is an incredible city. My feelings is that it’s like the city of Atlantis… Half the city was out-of-bounds for so long while they survived under Socialist regime. But in those times, East Berliners were forced to get creative. And it was a creativity born out of rebellion. I was super lucky in Berlin to be so involved in the culture of the city. My radio show was the only English show on an otherwise German station, but I also guided the Alternative Berlin walking tours, which kept my finger on the pulse and allowed me to learn about the rich history. Particularly the alternative history — we would show visitors the street art and graffiti, squats, underground clubs, the wall and how the locals chose to disobey the powers that be during one of the most influential times in history.
I lived in the former East, but would also do shows in the West, which was such an insight into how juxtaposed that city is. I’d do a gig in affluent West, where there would be one restaurant still open, a jazz bar, maybe one beggar in front of the train station, then get on a train for 25 minutes to the other side of the city where it was a complete circus! There would be punks, drunks, buskers, clubbers, dealers, tourists and everything in-between. It was mental! All my performances were in English, because it’s such an international city and Germans speak very good English anyway. It was a double-edged sword. Even with a German girlfriend, my own German skills never surpassed conversational level and dirty words.
SAT: I am so looking forward to hearing more about your adventures. What do you hope your audiences will experience, and also take away with them after enjoying your show?
RJ: Well I hope they’ll have a lot of fun with me! I’m working very hard on delivering the absolute best show I can. I want them to be razzled and dazzled, because some parts will make you laugh, some will make you think and some will make your jaw hit the floor!
Ultimately, I want to remind people to be kind to one another and not take life too seriously. We’re here for a good time, not for a long time, so enjoy yourself while you can. Especially when there’s one of the best cultural events in the world happening in your front-yard! We’re so fortunate to still have Adelaide Fringe going ahead even, so rub it in the rest of the world’s nose and go see as many shows as you can, while you can.
SAT: Thank you Rich for sharing your insights with us. Best of luck with your Fringe season!
RJ: Thank you so much for having me and for what you do. Big love!
Rich Jay’s ‘Being Rich but Dying Trying’ will be performed at the James Alexander Room at the Mecure Grosvenor Hotel Adelaide from Feb 19 – March 7.
Tickets available from the Fringe website:
https://adelaidefringe.com.au/fringetix/rich-jay-being-rich-but-dying-trying-af2021
You can follow Rich…… Instagram: @FreezerBird
