Miss Congeniality: The Unauthorised Musical Concert | Interview with Jencapella

TRANSCRIPT

Hello, I'm Ruth and I'm the Arts Business. We're here with Jen, who has been putting on Miss Congeniality over at the Annex Hall, is it? At Space Venues. So start with, tell us as briefly as possible what your show's about and why everyone should come and see it.

This is an adaptation of the Sandra Bullock movie Miss Congeniality. It's about an FBI agent who has to go undercover as a beauty queen and it is a musical with original songs. We tried to stay faithful to the movie but we do have a wee bit of fun with it as well.

And how's the response been so far? Oh, we've been delighted with the response. This was just a bucket list thing for me. I was like, I'm going to put the show on that I wrote and it'll be a nice time.

But we've met so many new people and people are like, when's it coming to London? When's it coming to New York? Like, oh, it's just, it's just here. So we've been delighted with the response. And why did you decide to bring it over to Edinburgh? Mostly, this was a lockdown project, as I'm sure a lot of shows end up being.

I was supposed to be writing my thesis and got very, very sidetracked. Yep, we've all been there. I was like, one of my dreams would be to put this on somewhere.

And we didn't want to make it big and flashy. And The Fringe has a really good variety of scale and venues. We could do a short show, we could do a parody version of it.

And we felt that this was, I come to The Fringe every year, I'm just from down the road. So this seemed ideal. This has been a dream come true.

Amazing. And how did you decide sort of what to include from a film, what to get rid of? Well, I suppose we started writing this by accident. We were talking in lockdown, all of our, these are all just my friends who are the cast of the show, and we were talking on House Party, which is what Zoom was before it was Zoomed very briefly in lockdown.

Like, do you know what would make a good musical? Miss Congeniality. It takes place mostly on a stage, it's quite camp. They're almost singing anywhere.

So I watched it and went, it would. And this is where they should have a song, and they should call it Glide. And the pageant girls should sing a song here about why they should be Miss United States.

And I think before I knew it, I was like, I'm writing this. And I was like, I'm going to finish it now. So it was- Was this the first time you performed it? Yes, this is our debut.

Amazing. And this is, we're kind of taking this as a little bit of a proof of concept to see if it works on stage. The response has been really positive.

So we're looking at what our next steps are after this. Do you have any idea what they are? We're talking about potentially the Glasgow Comedy Festival, which is next year. I wrote this as a full two and a half hour long musical.

We've had to really, really strip it back. We'd like to maybe do a 90 minute version. And then eventually, hopefully we can do the full version.

Yeah. You've come through from Glasgow, you said? Yes. Excellent.

And what do you do for a living? I'm a psychologist. Wow. So, they did let me graduate after I didn't write my thesis.

I was very, very lucky. So this is lovely because I have a very serious day job. And then I get to hang out with my friends and play pretend and do silly stuff.

How did you fund your show and budget? I'm self-funded. So I wrote this in 2020. And then last year, this is a silly sentence, I went very viral on TikTok.

I noticed. You've done incredibly well on TikTok. And when it happens, you start generating a little bit of TikTok.

I was like, wait a second, I have this little extra little pop that I wasn't planning on having. I have a little bit of a buzz. This might be a sign that it's time to see if I can put this on.

What exactly does your TikTok profile entail? Oh, just a little bit of everything. It took off because I discovered, and I know this is another silly sentence, that I sound exactly like the comedian Bo Burnham. Absolutely amazing.

Which sounds made up, but I assure you it's true. And then I was like, oh, I could maybe do something with this. I do a lot of live streams.

I've got a jar filled with other movies that I think would make good musicals. And every so often I pull a movie out of the jar and write one song, a concept song for the fake musical. So I think I've done 24 of those.

Great. So just lots of silly stuff, mostly musical stuff. Can you give us a rough idea of what your budget is, what you were aiming for? Yes.

So we spent £2,300. Our biggest expense was the venue. We were very fortunate that we didn't have to worry about travel and accommodation because we're all Scottish and local.

So that was our biggest expense. Probably our second biggest expense would be fringe fees, then tech. Those are both about £300 each.

And then after that would probably be insurance. Our promo budget was about £300. Again, fringe newbie thought I was being very clever.

I was like, instead of doing flyers, because everyone will do flyers, and I know flyers quite often end up in the bin. I'm going to get sashes made up with our show title on them, because people won't throw away a sash and they'll wear our promo throughout Edinburgh. So I ordered them from Alibaba back in April and they got lost at sea.

Oh no. And they've never arrived. Which is such a shame.

Me and my mum have a competition every year to see who can find the best flyer. And that would have been it. That was it.

We need to do it next year. I didn't put the dates on them. So it's just the title.

That's really cool. Back next year, you'll maybe get a sash. I'll come and hunt you down.

It might have seaweed on it. It might be wet. Who knows where it is? And what was the hardest part about preparing? I've never been a producer.

I've never been a director. I've never been a musical director. So I had to learn all of this as I went.

And we talk constantly about our learning lessons. And what we do is we film our shows and then we call me Sir Alex Ferguson. We watch them on a screen and go, this is what we need to fix and this is what we need to do.

So after the show's over, we're going to have our series of learning lessons. And I think my biggest learning lesson is that I was a bit like, I don't want to burden anyone with giving them jobs. I did everything.

And you can't do everything well. So I fumbled my way here. So I think I need to delegate a little bit more.

Are your friends performers as well? They are. We're all in the same amateur dramatics group, Monklands Light Opera. We're doing 9 to 5 in October.

So we're rehearsing for that show. I'm doing this show. It's been really fun.

Very different. Nice. What's your daily schedule look like? For this? For The Fringe.

Oh, yes. I get up at six o'clock. I usually edit a TikTok.

I layer up all my costume. We all live pretty close to each other. So we meet in a car park next to the train station where we live and pack into two cars.

And we make our way here. We're usually trying for half past nine. We do a lot of singalongs in the car.

Today's singalong was Mary Poppins. It was lovely. It's basically warming up as well, isn't it? Yeah, we wander up.

We always get a Greggs. The people in Greggs now know our order. It's really nice.

They gave us retroactive loyalty cards, like you've been here every day. Oh, that's great. We get in as quickly as we can because it's such a quick turnaround.

We perform our show. We usually debrief at this beer garden for an hour. We're high as kites.

Then we usually get something to eat. And then for our promo, we do pageants on the Royal Mile. That's amazing.

So we bring our spear sashes and our tiaras, and we get other performers with them to hold their flyers up, promote their shows, and we do a little pageant and we crown a winner. That's so cute. I really like that.

How do you handle marketing? So all of the flyering, social media, PR, you said sort of all by yourself? Yes. Again, that's something I should probably delegate. So usually on the car ride there, I'll do a TikTok.

On the car ride back, I'll do a TikTok. Again, next year, we'll probably need to delegate that a little bit better. But it's been going pretty well, and I think people have been excited to do the pageant.

We target performers who, for some reason, love being in a pageant. And they get to promote their show. So if you see us on the Royal Mile and want to promote your show, we have sashes.

Early days so far, but as you go through, have you got any tips of sort of managing burnout or exhaustion? Yes. We've kind of really paced ourselves. We are here nine days, and we said, okay, we're going to have rest days.

There was a storm on Monday, so we finished. It was like, everyone go home and have a nap. It made the world of good to us because we were starting to flag.

It really refreshed us. Our body clocks tend to be adrenaline, adrenaline, adrenaline. We all crash about four in the afternoon, and we don't push it.

We've decided we're having one day where we get to stay late, and then afterwards we're talking about having a day where we just go and call it our civilian day, where we're not performers and we'll have major FOMO, but we'll go in after we're done. So we've paced ourselves very sensibly. I think it's almost like a working day.

We're having a little after show party on Saturday. Jenny, who plays Kathy Morningsidehouse, she has a hot tub. They said they're going to put a little inflatable on me so I don't fall asleep in the hot tub.

Oh, amazing. So we're good. What do you wish you'd known before you did The Bridge? Oh, everything.

I wish I'd known everything. There were so many things. Obviously, this festival has run for years.

It knows what it's doing. It's extremely professional. No stone left unturned.

So even things like I had to write a props list, and they will ask you, list your props. What is it made out of? What size is it? What does it weigh? Did you fireproof it? Show us what you fireproofed it with. I'm like, I thought we could just show up and sing some songs.

It's a very detail-orientated, very meticulous process. Always follow the rules of your venue. Your venues are there to help you, and always be a courteous guest at your venues because they're toasting you for the week.

And how has space been for you? Oh, they've been absolutely cracking. Abbey has been our tech person most of the week. She's great.

She has the best earrings I've ever seen. Yesterday, there were little packets of skips. Today, they're little mushrooms.

So no, everyone's been really, really lovely. If someone wanted to bring a show next year, what advice would you give them? Start early. Delegate.

Pace yourself. Have fun. And don't dropship lots of things from the other side of the world.

They may sink. Yeah, I mean, that was very unfortunate. Oh, no.

I think they're saying you should do a fringe show about your sashes next year. And hopefully you'll have them by then. Oh, I can't wait.

I can't wait. We keep jumping. There's some very fabulous mermaids having a pageant.

Can you sum up your fringe experience for me in one sentence? Oh, it's been exciting. It's been delightful. It's been tiring, but I wouldn't change it for anything.

I thought this was going to end here, and now we're talking about next steps. And finally, where can our audiences find you? They can find me on at Jen Capella on TikTok and Anjette Capella on YouTube. You can find us performing till Saturday the 9th of August at the Space at Symposium Hall at 10.30. And you can find a lot of our cast performing again in October with Monklands Light Opera at Ebenezer Town Hall doing 9 to 5. Fantastic.

Thank you so much. Thank you.