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arts
Are you lonesome tonight? Getting Shirty
A new type of reality show threatens BB’s omnipresence
p14 Simply Natalie Peck
Dread. He ’s After seven years of Big Brother,
like it or loath it, we have all become
back familiar with the premise of reality tel-
evision. But while Nikki and Pete were
testing the elastic limits of their fifteen
minutes, a new breed of internet reality
show has emerged stateside, one at-
tracting fifteen million viewers.
p15 The new For the uninitiated, sixteen-year-old
W icker Man home-schooled Bree, or ‘Lonelygirl15’,
has been posting her video blogs on
scandal the internet site YouTube since June,
filmed in her bedroom and edited by
her best friend/love interest, Daniel - a
secret kept from her overprotective and
religious parents.
p17 You r key Fans began to
to the city of notice a pictu re
Brighton of infamous
occultist
Aleister Crowley
on her wall Lonelygirl15 - coming soon to a movie theatre near you?
So far, so unremarkable, but what
initially set Lonelygirl15 apart from
the copious other teenage blogs is
the mystery surrounding the religion
practiced by Bree and her parents,
which has only been hinted at and
never named. Fans began to notice
what was later revealed to be a picture
of infamous occultist Aleister Crowley
on Bree’s wall and Daniel’s allusions to
the ‘weirdness’ of her beliefs through
his own videos. Questions were raised
as Bree later revealed that she was to
take part in an important ceremony for
which she had to prepare by learning
an ancient language and dieting. As
Diagnosis positive for Sussex at the fringe
Jez Pike
This August saw a veritable mass
migration of Sussex students, heading
northwards to the city of Edinburgh for
another year of the world’s largest arts
festival. Despite eleven hour coach
journeys up there and accommodation
that would have sardines complaining,
it was almost like a home from home
for the scores of intrepid Brightonians
who made their way up.
Amid the thousands of fringe
shows battling for publicity in the flyer
swamped city were no less than three
with Sussex connections: Other Peo-
ple, a new piece of comic writing by
Matt Greene, Little Red Riding Hood,
a darkly devised adaptation directed by
Leah Townley and Sussex University
Drama Society’s (SUDS) production of
The Hypochondriac by Moliere.
the intrigue drew thousands of fans to
Lonelygirl15, other aspects of the vid-
eos began to invite scrutiny.
Bree is just a little too photogenic;
her room is film-set perfect; her obser-
vations either precociously astute or
incredibly naïve. Daniel is a geek of the
Seth Cohen variety: witty, considerate
and loveable. In short, it’s The Wicker
Man meets Dawson’s Creek. The site,
lonelygirl15.com, supposedly set up by
a fan, was revealed to have been reg-
istered a month before the first video
was posted. Regular viewers began to
question the authenticity of Bree and
what started as a spot of “Breespotting”
escalated into a national obsession,
until writer Ramish Flinders and film-
maker Miles Beckett outed themselves
earlier this month as Lonelygirl15’s
creators, describing their venture to
The New York Times as an ‘art project.’
Thanks to union support, SUDS
was able to mount their biggest and
most ambitious venture in recent his-
tory. In only their second year back at
the fringe, SUDS proved, against the
odds, that university drama societies
can compete with professional shows
in one of the most competitive theat-
rical environments in the world. Their
highly physical and inventive produc-
tion of Moliere’s mad-cap farce about a
deluded hypochondriac father and his
apparently scheming family, directed
by Tom McLaren, played for the entire
festival, in total to over 1250 people.
Getting the audiences at the fringe
can be a real struggle; it’s not rare for
shows to play to two or three people,
and sometimes none at all. Thankfully
the cast’s enthusiastic presence on the
High Street meant it wasn’t long before
the production began to benefit from
‘Bree’ is in fact nineteen-year-old Jes-
sica Lee Rose, an aspiring actress from
New Zealand who has since appeared
on Jay Leno’s The Tonight Show and
been interviewed for MTV.
While her more dedicated fans have
reacted in outrage at being duped,
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he videos are still being posted and
viewed by legions of followers. It has
been suggested that the videos are an
elaborate teaser campaign for a film or
television show, a theory legitimised by
the fact that Rose is now represented
by one of the largest talent agencies
in Hollywood. Whatever the future
holds for Lonelygirl15, a captive audi-
ence is awaiting the next move of the
creators. As a perfected fictional ‘real-
ity’ infiltrates the entertainment forum,
could we be looking at the end for Big
Brother, Love Island and I’m A Celeb-
rity? Let us at least dream…
the legendary fringe word-of-mouth,
getting off to great start in the first
week and securing a four star review
from Three Weeks, the free publica-
tion that is devoted exclusively to the
fringe. But more was to follow.
After a tough second week, flag-
ging spirits were revived with a five
star review in The Scotsman. As one of
only a few plays to receive such an ac-
colade the SUDS team can be assured
of their status as one of the leading
drama societies in the country and with
the production entering the National
Student Drama Festival in March, con-
fidence is high
If you missed it, don’t worry. Three
more performances back on campus
are already planned while the produc-
tion is also entering for the National
Student Drama Festival. So with a bit
of luck, there might well be a mass mi-
to contribute, email badger-arts@ussu.sussex.ac.uk
monday 2 october 2006
Mark Jackson
The madcap improvised antics of
Off The Cuff were unquestionably one
of the highlights of the last year, and for
those able to resist the alcohol-fuelled
behemoth that was the Freshers’ pub
crawl, Tuesday night saw Sussex’s only
improv comedy troupe returning for an-
other year on fine form.
The new year has brought new
faces and new formats to the line-up,
all of which ran smoothly alongside the
established favourites and old hands for
what was probably the best night out in
Brighton on Tuesday that didn’t involve
drinking thirty tequila shots in an hour.
Admittedly, with the cast returning
from four months off, combined with
dwindling audience numbers, this show
was always going to be a difficult hurdle
to overcome, but all things considered
the cast performed admirably and – with
jokes about everything from chavs and
ketchup-toting serial killers to David
Hasselhoff action figures – the laughs
were soon coming thick and fast.
Of course, improvisational comedy
is, by nature, unrehearsed, but so many
of the cast have been performing these
games for so long now that it almost
seems like second nature to them, and
it was left to the newcomers to provide
the slightly unhinged mayhem that
made last year’s performances such a
joy to watch.
With a year of shows ahead, and
no more pub crawls to be had for a
long while, Off The Cuff is well worth
the discerning comedy fan’s time, and if
this performance was anything to go by,
things can only get better.
gration up to Scarborough next March.
The Hypochondriac
Tuesday 3 - Thursday 5 October
7.30pm
Debating Chamber
photo: Jez Pike
The hypochondriac