A relatively obscure street band formed in Brighton, U.K., in the early 80s, intriguingly called Pookiesnackenburger, has now evolved into a worldwide musical sensation that currently tours the world with several production companies staging shows.
Stomp , brought to Mumbai by AGP World, is a theatrical production that involves music, acrobatics and histrionics, and has been co-created by musician Luke Creswell and musician/director Steve McNicholas.
Perhaps Cresswell and McNicholas didn’t realise the phenomenal vaudevillian spectacle they’d go on to create. With Pookiesnackenburger, which was a travelling band, both Cresswell and McNicholas extensively toured cities and towns entertaining crowds with their histrionics and music.
“It’s now been more than 35 years,” reminisces McNicholas. “When I joined, I wrote a bunch of songs for the band and we became Pookiesnackenburger. There wasn’t really anything like it at the time.” The six-piece band — comprising members of London’s then punk scene — featured the future Stomp creators, with Cresswell on snare and African log drum, and McNicholas on the fiddle and violin.
Blast to the past
For about a decade, the slapstick musical ensemble travelled all over Europe. One particular instance still brings on the chuckles for the co-creators.
During a tour in Paris, the band found a great spot on the boulevard that would surely give them the attention and money they desired. However, the performance turned out to be the shortest of their careers when a burly Romanian fire-eater claimed ownership of the place. “He said if we didn’t finish in the next 10 minutes, he would set fire to our instruments,” laughs McNicholas.
At another show in Zurich, McNicholas slipped while leaping and jumping around, falling backwards to crush his violin. “Well, there wasn’t a lot of news at the time, because it became front-page news,” says the director.
He says people from the audience were really supportive and sympathetic. While one bystander offered the band 200 pounds to buy a new violin, another actually went home and got one for McNicholas. “A year later, we were performing there again and I gave it back to him.”
Owing to the nature of Pookiesnackenburger’s performances, portability was of absolute essence. “Luke carried his snare and log drum, but it was a little restricting for percussionists,” says McNicholas. “So he started to improvise and play whatever was around at the time. If someone had a bottle in their hand, he’d play it. That really was the germ of the idea that became Stomp .”
Decoding the steps
By his own admission, Stomp ’s director says there hasn’t been a single point of inspiration. Instead, it’s been an evolution where influences have been drawn from experiences and, more importantly, from drumming groups such as the Japanese outfit Kodo, choreography from films like Stormy Weather (1943), Fred Astaire’s moves, and the company Moving Picture Mime (MPM). “When we would watch them (MPM) do these shows without words, that was something so expressive and that really appealed to us,” says McNicholas. “We weren’t mime artists or physical comedians.”
But the English musicians and co-founders of the show were determined to create a similar effect on people using the universal quality of rhythm. Over the years, it’s become evident that no matter where the show’s mounted, humour, rhythm has managed to unite audiences.
“The core of the message is as simple as a heartbeat, which is the same wherever you are in the world,” McNicholas says. The result is a grungy stage upon which performers take chances to beat, slap, clap, yes even stomp, and pretty much do what they can with their body and a few props to make percussion. Past routines have seen dishwashers, garbage bins, buckets, sticks and even brooms used to make music.
And the key to keep resonating with people all over the world is entirely dependant on one feat: constant evolution and innovation. It’s as if it’s a compulsive disorder for the cast and crew, they’re forever striving to develop new routines. So McNicholas and the troupe can’t ever just pay a simple visit to a hardware or DIY store. “Part of your brain is always looking for new instruments to make a new sound,” he says, before adding that it’s been 25 years and they haven’t stopped yet. New routines are developed, honed and added to the show every three years. And unlike other productions, innovation won’t dilute Stomp ’s effect. “The great thing for us is that Stomp is a concept which means the show can change a lot and yet remain Stomp,” says the director. “Whereas others, if you change several routines it would cease to be that show.”
Then and now
Since the show’s first international tour in 1991, Stomp has strived to become entirely self-sufficient. “We have to think about each territory and we recce every single venue we go to, to iron out any of the problems that we might encounter,” says Glynis Henderson, founder of her eponymous production company that has been handling the productions at West End in London since the beginning.
The producer stresses that the logistics of shipping out a production like Stomp is quite complicated. McNicholas remembers one of the earliest international tours in Australia where local hardware stores served to equip the performers with instruments. However, it wasn’t so in Hong Kong on a subsequent trip. “We couldn’t find half the things we needed,” he says. “To the point where we grabbed a [fallen] hubcap that rolled along the street.”
The version of Stomp that Mumbai will get to witness will be the Henderson Company’s London effort with 12 performers banging their way through an hour and 45 minutes of adrenaline-fuelled slapstick percussion.
Word has it that a bigger Indian tour is in the works for the show’s 26th year. That just means we get to see just how different two shows can be.
Stomp at Jamshed Bhabha Theatre, NCPA, from December 9 to 18. See bookmyshow.com
