Kitchen Sink Fest '24: Inspired & oops I don't want no scrubs to hit me baby again

The Substation lineup for Kitchen Sink Fest ’24 is like if performance poetry had a baby with a LimeWired copy of So Fresh: The Hits of Winter 2004.

Two brand new, genre-defying pieces from some of Sydney’s most exciting theatre makers back-to-back for the one ticket price. A two-for-one dose of theatrical daring.

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Inspired

Created/Performed by Albert Lin

Dramaturgy by Tasnim Hossain

Having written a poem every day for the past 7 years, Albert has overcome writer's block 2,821 times (and counting). Join him in a seminar, but like, more theatrical, where you will learn how to defeat writer's block once and for all and write the damn thing. Learn how write good! Hear wisdom from a 20-something with a questionable amount of life experience! Gasp at how he writes a poem in 20 minutes or less using prompts given by you, the audience! Maybe he'll sing for you (probably not). Come be inspired.

oops I don’t want no scrubs to hit me baby again

Created by Linda Chen

+ special guests

She’s so lucky, she’s a star... isn’t she?

Alexis, queen of teenage pop, is eager to grow up a little bit. She just confirmed, on her website, that she’s pregnant. Is she a big girl now? Or just posing? Now the subject of a string of embarrassing articles, she’s on the offensive against celebrity magazines. But if her actions contradict her words, she’s not the only one confused. Pop culture is as divided on girls’ roles as any other indicator. Chafing against the constraints of being a nice girl, Alexis is going to have to realize how to use that tight little voice to seize her identity the way pop entrepreneurs want her to. The freedom she wants is the freedom to package herself as both a pop product and an object of desire. How many other ways can a girl assert herself?

Almost every word from this copy has been pulled, near verbatim, from New York Times articles referring to Britney Spears from 1999 – 2005, as have the words for this show (mostly)! Drawing from various pieces of media referring to female celebrities from the turn of the millennium, oops is an archive tabloid remix pseudo-karaoke show that plays on the lipsync-heavy, remix-driven, Y2K-revivalist TikTok culture of today.

What happens if we’re not working it out on the remix? What happens when the lines we’re fed maybe kind of suck? Follow Alexis as she spits out words written by male music reviewers from 1999, sprinkled with lyrics from your favourite pop hits and maybe a TikTok comment or two.

Maybe she’ll find all the answers. If not, well, at least she’s pretty when she cries.

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Produced by Toby Blome, Sarah Caroll, Emma O’Sullivan, Lungol Wekina

Lighting Design and Stage Management by Caitlin Cowan

But wait, there’s more! Click here to see the Loading Dock lineup for Kitchen Sink Fest ’24.