Interview: Zach & Viggo
Last year’s Brighton Fringe Best Comedy winners Zach & Viggo are back with a new show, two solo shows & their original award-winning show! The busy chaps took time to catch up with Victoria Nangle
Hi guys! So pleased to be having you back to the Brighton Fringe. After picking up accolades here last year – what have you been up to?
We’ve had quite a wild ride since last year’s Brighton Fringe. We performed all over Europe, North America and Australia, selling out shows at Second City in Chicago, our entire run at Underbelly for the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe and winning a comedy award at Adelaide Fringe.
Viggo was in a wheelchair for a few weeks in Scandinavia and broke his hand in Australia, Zach’s girlfriend flew to Adelaide then broke up with him over the phone the day she left and Jonny Jonny Woolley (director) has been living like a modern-day prince, reading fine literature and bathing in champagne.
You obviously have a close working relationship. What is your writing process when it comes to putting together your shows?
Whenever we try and ‘sit down to write’ we end up procrastinating and doing literally anything else. We usually come up with material when we’re hanging out offstage. If we can make each other laugh in real life, we’ll try and turn it into something we can perform. Once we put it up onstage, we try it around five-six times to see what would be the funniest way to approach it. It’s hard because we have to say goodbye to most of the ideas we throw against the wall, but the ones that stick last for a while.
Whose idea was it to have solo shows too this year – and did it feel tricky developing them separately alongside a new double act show?
Developing three new shows can be overwhelming at times but we’re pulling it off. Our bodies hurt in places we didn’t even know we could feel but we’re loving every second of it.
We’re still figuring out what our solo voices are, as well as our duo voice, but the distinctions are clear enough that we never worry about too much crossover between the shows.
Who knows what will happen at the end of the UK tour but it looks like Zach’s solo show is a bit wilder while Viggo’s is more theatrical – which makes perfect sense when you look at the direction we’re heading with Zach & Viggo. All three shows are directed by Jonny which is great because he’s the best director on the circuit.
The beginning of this modern clown movement in performers like Charlie Chaplin
If girls are made of ‘sugar and spice’, and boys are made of ‘slugs and snails’, what are the secret ingredients to clowning?
Pleasure, sensitivity, terrible ideas, a lot of luck and no university degrees.
How do you explain the difference between the traditional association of clowns and the contemporary school of clowning?
The core of the work is still the same: being an idiot. However, we aren’t performing in a circus like clowns used to, so the demands are different. We don’t need the white face paint or red noses or big shoes (costume elements designed so the clown could be seen by patrons in the back of a poorly lit circus tent), but we still need to be as charming and funny as possible.
You can see the beginning of this modern clown movement in performers like Charlie Chaplin and Dick Van Dyke, and more recently in Sacha Baron Cohen’s work as Borat and Ali G — none of these guys looked like clowns per se, but the basics of what they were doing is very much so: pleasure, being a charming idiot, finding the absurd in the mundane, and most of all, being able to turn bad into good.
Thank you for bringing back last year’s award-winning ‘Thunderflop’. It left me grinning for ages. No pressure, but can you give us an inkling as to what might be in the magic of your new show ‘Dream Team’?
Dream Team is still very much a work in progress – we’re still not even sure if ‘Dream Team’ will be the final name – and we’re hoping to find our feet in Brighton and Prague before heading up to Edinburgh.
We’re moving away from cutesy audience participation and more towards chaotic madness. We’ve got some really hard-hitting new numbers that we’ve developed overseas that we’re really excited to bring to the UK.
You’ve now been travelling the world together, working together – what winds you up the most about the other?
Viggo is always late, Jonny never flyers, and Zach is an international war criminal.
What are you expecting from this year’s Brighton Fringe experience?
The best case scenario for us would be to sell out all of our shows, make the new show twice as good as the old show, continue to bring awareness to an already expanding Brighton Fringe, make sure everyone knows The Warren is the sickest spot in the festival, and to spend late nights with new and old friends.
Zach & Viggo: Thunderflop, 5 May @ 8.15pm & 6 May @ 9.45pm, £10-7.50; Zach & Viggo: Dream Team, 19-21 May, 10pm, £10-7.50; Zach Zucker: Human Person, 12-14 May, £9.50/8; Viggo Venn: The Life of Pepito, 12-14 May, £9.50/8 – all at The Warren, www.brightonfringe.org
Photo credit: Stano Murin Photography
