What’s On: Oracle – Turn up the Bass Fam – Star Observer
Bass G Fam, the incredible talent behind Bass Fam Creative and creative director behind the jaw-dropping spectacle that is his new show, Oracle, took some time out to chat with the Star Observer about wagging science, diversity and how proud his mum is!
Bass, (rhymes with sass), had people recognise his gifts early on, saying “At school, our chemistry teacher was Mr Price and his wife, Mrs Price was the Drama teacher and I always used to skip his class to go and help Mrs Price set up the stage sets, or make costumes or spray and style wigs with her and I never got into trouble because she would always send me back to her husband for the last ten minutes, just to make sure that I got the assignment and when I’d walk in he’d say, “where have you been?” and I’d say, “with your wife! She said it was ok!”
The style of show that Bass will soon be known worldwide for lends itself to fantastic opportunities for diversity in casting and it’s something that Bass feels passionately about,
“Yeah, 100%. It’s what Bass Fam creative’s all about. All we want is to make sure that we’ve got the diversity, the versatility, we want to make sure that we’ve got representation in our shows, that for me is so key.”
“I am a person of colour, I am a proud gay man, so I want to make sure that I showcase that in my work, just so that the younger generation coming up can see what we’d wished that we’d seen growing up, if that makes sense.” It definitely does!
Research for this interview uncovered behind-the-scenes pics of his mum at Oracle, looking proud as punch and it just happened that she was sitting in on the interview, so of course, I had to shout out to Mum!
“She is sitting right here, I think she’s proud on so many levels, not just obviously the whole fact I’m her son and I’m doing this but I think she’s proud to see our culture being celebrated on stage, on a mainstream stage, in Australia and people are clapping and cheering to our Egyptian ancestors with Arabic music and all of that so there’s a lot of levels where that pride comes from right now.”
Catch ORACLE – the myth, at the Opera House, 3-14 August