Edinburgh 2022: The Failure Cabaret Guest Blog

Guest Blog: The Fremonts bring brand-new dark comedy cabaret to the Fringe

Stephanie Dodd and Justin Badger discuss the balance between being purely personal and pleasing the crowd

Husband and wife duo Stephanie Dodd and Justin Badger blog for BroadwayWorld about debuting The Failure Cabaret in Edinburgh along with the benefits and pitfalls of writing a show with your partner about your most personal and sometimes sensitive subjects

The Failure Cabaret (written and performed by The Fremonts - Stephanie Dodd & Justin Badger) was born in a hotel bar in Boulder, Colorado. After living in NYC and working as actors for 14 years, we relocated to Boulder to pursue writing music in a less expensive place. We were having drinks with our boss at the time, Chuck Porter, who is an advertising legend, huge fan of theatre and now our Executive Producer. He asked, "What if you write a new theatre piece and I produce it?"

We decided to write about all the ways we screwed up, gave up on our dreams, suffered with mental illness, struggled financially and were barely able to keep our marriage together. You know... lighthearted stuff. Luckily, we both love comedy, so the darker the material the more jokes we wrote. We were also able to weave our original music into the story. We ended up creating this quirky, darkly comic cabaret that brings some vulnerable topics into the light.

At first, there was a sense of dread about revisiting our difficult experiences in order to write about them. It required spending a lot of time in uncomfortable old stories to rehash what happened and figure out what would translate to the stage. We had to process some challenging feelings and dynamics that came up from spending so much time reviewing the past. Luckily, we have great mental health care providers to help with that.

After doing a lot of therapy to accept the ugly ways we hurt each other and ourselves, we were able to find our groove with the comedy and the show became a container for our own healing. Every time we perform the piece, audience members tell us how they relate and share their own stories about mental illness and relationship troubles. It gives us a way to connect to other people and ask some of our bigger questions like... Why do so many people choose the path of long-term partnership when it is clearly fraught with difficulties? Why is coupling so celebrated in our culture? What truths do we agree to hide from the outside world about our behavior inside intimate relationships? How do culturally accepted gender roles shape our private household landscapes?

Because we are married and created this very personal show together, there have been times when we felt isolated in the work. Most of our rehearsals are just the two of us at home singing into each other's faces, retelling jokes we've heard a million times and trying to refine how we're going to talk about the worst moments of our relationship. That can feel like a slog after a while. Recently, we started collaborating with two master artists (Paula Langton and Ken Cheeseman) to help us fine tune our show. Having them in the room has made everything a lot better!

A huge benefit of working together as a cohabiting couple is that scheduling is very easy. We rehearse every morning and almost every evening after work. Plus, there's a good division of labour between us. We both work full time corporate jobs in administrative roles, so we're pretty good at keeping things organised. Justin is excellent at design and social media content creation. Steph does most of the writing for the show. We compose the music together. It's hard to imagine doing this much creative work with anyone else.

As we sing in our show, partnership is not as "pretty as it seems." By putting our intimate secrets on display, we're inviting the audience to feel less alone with their own trials and tribulations. The Failure Cabaret strikes a balance

between sharing our personal vulnerabilities and serving up crowd-pleasing entertainment through a shiny veneer of good, old-fashioned sinister vaudevillian charm.

The Failure Cabaret, Underbelly Cowgate (Belly Laugh), 9.05pm, 4-28 August (not 16)

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Photo credit: Rachel Graham

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