Justin Kennedy is branching into new territory in his new Comedy Festival show Beezlebuzz. “It’s a play inspired by Lord of the Flies,” says Justin, “it’s a one man show…at this stage I’ve got about twelve characters… [it will] probably go up to fifteen or sixteen,” with Justin playing all of the characters. “It’s set on a remote paddle party boat…that’s kind of like the island that they can’t get off…the party from hell…they’re just this whole group of disparate people just trying to get off the island, the boat island.”
Justin says that this is the most theatrically based show he has ever done and he has drawn on various influences in creating this show. “I wanted to do a one man play for a start, and it’s just a matter of finding a topic. There was a show at the fringe festival last year called Basic Training that really inspired me and it was just one man…it was his personal story…it was a fantastic story and I wanted to do something similar to it,” says Justin, adding “I didn’t have that personal story of my own to tell…his was such an extraordinary tale.”
“One of my favourite movies was Oh Brother Where Art Thou,” he says, “which is kind of this retelling of Ulysses…I wanted to do something else where I adapted a contemporary Classic into something else, into another tale.” He describes his current show as “a different story but just using flavours of ‘Lord of the Flies’.” You might not be able to get a berth on ‘Survivor’ or figure out the clues on ‘Lost’, but you can check out a show which cites Lord of the Flies as an influence, an early version of both.
To get details on Beezlebuzz go to Justin Kennedy – Beelzebuz