Interview with Tommy Dassalo
Cultures are clashed, guns are toted and the boundaries of racism are explored in Tommy Dassalo’s and Dave Bushell’s Comedy Festival show “I heart Racism”. “It’s basically a play about racism,” says Tommy, “Dave Bushell plays a young hippy who gets sent to live in the country with his racist grandpa, that is me, and they battle for control of the town and hilarity ensues.”
Directed by Adrian Callear, “I Heart Racism” premiered at last year’s Melbourne Fringe Festival. “We did three nights and we had enough to sort of find out what worked and there were just a couple of things that we just needed to tweak and amp up and some stuff’s been dropped and there’s new stuff in there, new videos and other stuff which we’re keeping secret.”
Having known Tommy for a while, and always having regarded him as a gentle soul, I was a little alarmed to see one of the promotional images for the show depicting Tommy toting a serious looking shotgun. “The gun’s actually been photoshopped into my hand by Gavin Baskerville” says Tommy. “In the real photo it’s like a little toy gun, a little plastic one that I used on stage and then we went ‘Gavin, can you give us a hardcore one’...it’s a credit to his work that you think it’s real.”
At just nineteen years of age Tommy makes a dramatic leap in characterisation, playing an elderly grandfather in the show. “We did a lot of work with our director on studying the walks of older people and a lot of vocal stuff…at the end of the day it’s still an onstage thing, I don’t think anyone’s gonna actually think I’m a ninety year old man,” says Tommy, “[I] studied my grandpa lot, he was very good for getting the walk and stuff down”
“I Heart Racism” marks the first time Tommy and Dave have embarked on the play format, deviating from their previous experiences as standups. Tommy describes one of the more demanding aspects of this process as “sitting down and working out the plot and where the story’s gotta go…[in] standup you can think of an idea and run with it whereas with the play you’ve gotta look at the script and see where it fits in.” The collaborative process has also been a plus for Tommy. “With stand up you just sort of write it on your own and then do it on your own…doing the play…we’ve had a lot of sessions with me Dave and Adrian all sitting around and you can come up with a joke and other people sort of chop stuff into it and it glows.” Tommy has also felt this collaborative support extend through to the performances. “You’ve always got someone to back you up and at the same time you’ve also gotta focus on backing someone else on stage.”
To check out details on this show go to I Heart Racism