Brisbane cabaret duo Emma Dean and Jake Diefenbach are coming home this month to perform their newest show ‘An End to Dreaming’ before jet-setting to the New York International Fringe Festival.
The pair play a modern day Hansel and Gretel, working their way through the darkness of their forest world. “‘An End to Dreaming’ is a personal fairytale told by myself and Jake Diefenbach, and it’s the journey from the darkness into the light. Or in other words, from despair to discovering hopes,” Emma says.
“It’s told in five stages; firstly the darkness, then the awakening, the reckoning, the healing and finally the light. So it’s told like a fairytale and it’s very fantastical and gothic, with that pop, cabaret theatrical twist.”
Both Emma and Jake have been busy working on a variety of different projects but are very excited to be performing in New York this August. “Planting yourself in New York for a month, there is potential for anything to happen.”
They have both been working on their own careers as well as their collaborations with each other and others, many of which Emma says overlap. “We are incredibly busy at the moment juggling a whole bunch of different projects which all kind of overlap, so it can get a little confusing.
“I think both Jake and I are feeling as if our brains are split into many different compartments at the moment.”
Despite being busy Emma says that she is so thankful for all the opportunities and says that working with Jake on ‘An End to Dreaming’ has been amazing. “When I work with Jake it feels very magical and very electric, because we do tend to balance each other — the things I’m not so good at he’s very good at and vice versa,” she says.
“A lot of the songs we’ve written together. So we’ll be in a room and he will go away for ten minutes with the headphones and just lay down a piano part and make up a melody and some words. He will play it for me and then I’ll take over, so it’s very tag team, it’s quite bizarre and I’ve never worked with anyone in that way before.”
Emma says that she has always been theatrical and is attracted to art that reflects that. She says that when putting on a show she likes things that push the boundaries and broach subjects that you wouldn’t usually hear about. “I’ve always been a bit of a drama queen. I love that world where music and theatre meet because I love things that can’t be boxed. Thus I’ve always been drawn to fringe theatre.”
When writing ‘An End to Dreaming’ Emma and Jake create their own world within the show, drawing inspiration from their personal journeys and dark times in their lives. There is a fourth wall element, with no audience interaction, which Emma says actually draws the crowd into the world in front of them.
“The audience can walk in expecting to enter that fantastical land. And even though we do describe it as an adult fairytale, it’s hard not to get in touch with the inner child as it’s quite imaginative, and very dark but also full of hope.”
Ultimately Emma says that the performance is one of belief and hopes that audiences will take away a feeling of empowerment knowing that they can reach the light at the end of any darkness in their own lives.
“I think it comes back to hope, and always remembering there is a light at the end of the tunnel no matter how thick the darkness feels,” she says.
‘An End to Dreaming’ will be at the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts, Saturday April 28.
