 "LIPS" is born of a long and substantial career. It is a fiction based on some auto-biographical truths, philosophies and personal experiences that have littered the path of Chris Covington as he has wandered the world as Chris Kirby, actor/writer/comedian.
It is a unique theatrical concept, an original, innovative approach to a very old, traditional skill. It’s an hilarious, multi-layered stage play which uses insight and humour to morph the art of ventriloquism into the engine that drives a powerful drama.
Chris and his director, Bill Levis, share a philosophy that says new work should be allowed all the time it needs to develop in order to reach its full potential. From its beginnings at Sydney’s Tilbury Hotel and the Glen Street Theatre, the play, as it is now, emerged through several years of re-writing, work-shopping and audience testing.
Gratifying reaction from audiences and reviewers encouraged the continued development process. During this gestation period the British producer, Derek Glynne, in Australia for The Royal Shakespeare Company, was impressed enough to suggest that because of its unique qualities, originality and commercial potential, “LIPS” should be seen in London. He helped mount a successful showcase and continues to be most supportive of LIPS’S progress.
In November '98 Chris returned to London and met Paul Webb, a British playwright, journalist, theatre lecturer and producer. Paul was impressed by the things he had heard about the London Showcase and was keen to read the play. Through Paul LIPS received its first London season at THE NEW END THEATRE, HAMPSTEAD. This led to its breakthrough season at THE EDINBURGH FESTIVAL in 2002.
Graham "Lips" Buchanan comes face to face with his self-image and it turns out to be a control freak.
An hilarious bone-chiller of a play that investigates the nature of identity and the reality of psychosis.
When you’re wiped out in a multi-car pile up in the Sydney Harbour Tunnel and it’s all your fault, it can take the edge right off your day!
Graham "LIPS" Buchanan finds himself stranded between lives and he wants to know why. What does Eddie know that Lips can’t remember? Lips literally goes nuts trying to separate fact, fantasy and off-the-wall recollections of a bizarre existence and the people in it: Two fathers; Eddie, the imaginary friend who hates him; a dead mother who likes to pop into his dreams for a chat; an ex-wife who might be carrying Eddie’s baby, all ingredients in a darkly comic recipe, gleefully dolloped out one at a time by the sinister Eddie and stirred mercilessly toward a surprising but inevitable ending.
Our research reveals that there has been no real innovation in the craft of ventriloquism since the 1920’s when Arthur Prince turned it from a “big” stage act – often with a story line that was populated with a number of dolls, assistants and large settings – into a solo, front of curtain performance. The hapless ventriloquist doomed to play second fiddle to a smart-mouthed dummy was born and, fundamentally, that’s how it has stayed.
There’s been a long held perception that ventriloquism is a dying art. Chris wanted to create something new with the craft, something which was more relevant to our times to which an audience could relate. The writer/actor is gratified by a comment made by the young reviewer from a University magazine in Melbourne who, in her enthusiastic review said that Lips “just might be ventriloquism’s post modern redeemer”.
In the days when Chris utilized the craft as part of his stand up performance, he established an on-stage persona that indulged a confused, split-level relationship with the doll which he treated as a combination theatrical prop and real personality. This twisted, psychological approach created a dramatic tension beneath the comedy which seemed to elicit an empathetic reaction from the audience. Why? Perhaps there was a commonality about ventriloquism with which most people could identify, albeit subconsciously. And it occurred to him that, essentially, the craft dealt with something we all do to varying degrees - we talk to ourselves. Perhaps, to the audience, the doll represented his externalized inner-self. His inner-demons? We all have those. Perhaps it was this confrontation with which they empathized.
Chris’s imagination ignited. Could all this conjecture reveal not so much a new take on an old art form but, more seriously, a new kind of performance based on the subjective motivations of the performer himself? Too confronting for cabaret? Yes. It could mean it had to be a character in a play. The possibilities were presenting themselves at a rapid rate. ”LIPS” was emerging.
Nothing like LIPS has ever been done before. These themes have been brushed against in film and television but never explored so fully on the live stage.
CHRIS: “It occurred to me during the evolution of “LIPS” that, if I could make
this work, I would be returning ventriloquism to its original story-telling
roots and the performance aspect of the play would not be an act but the
core of the drama. As an actor/writer that was an exciting idea. Who
knows, it might even inspire young, new practitioners of the craft into new
ways of thinking about it and not be trapped in a formula that has become
tired and mostly predictable. Theatre should excite, surprise and say some-
thing relevant to its time about the human condition – what if I could take
this ancient craft to those heights?”
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