Features Q&A and Interviews Published 20 May 2011

Ridiculusmus

2011 marks the 18th birthday of innovative theatre company Ridiculusmus. We speak to David Woods and Jon Haynes about their latest work, Total Football, which opens at the Barbican this month.
Honour Bayes

Two men dressed in suits stood in a suitcase filled with grass. Over the course of 70 minutes they managed to communicate the absurdity and frustration of the stymied Northern Ireland peace process without taking a step out of their turf box. Exuberant, sombre yet defiantly humorous Say Nothing was my first experience of the work of Ridiculusmus. At the time I was a student at the University of Kent, the establishment where David Woods and Jon Haynes also gained their PhDs. With doctorates in, respectively, comedy and performance art, the work of Woods and Haynes has always defied convention. The amalgamation of humour and artistry has helped to make their work incredibly accessible, winning them an affectionate place within the heart of both critics and audiences for the last 18 years.

Nearly two decades of work is an impressive legacy for a still vigorous company of two; many marriages don’t last that long. “Yes but there are three people in our marriage, the third one being the audience!” Down the phone I can hear Woods grinning. “It’s shocking when you think about it”¦ I’ve spent more time with [Haynes] than any other relationship in my life.” Apart from the threesome aspect why has it worked for so long? The answer is refreshingly non-‘luvvie’ “We don’t hang out together (people do find this quite odd)”¦ to keep fresh and excited about meeting we just really meet to work and perform. When we’ve got a show up and running I’ll only really see him a few minutes before the show, it’s driven on the performing.” This sounds like a reasonable statement but I actually do find myself feeling surprised by it; on stage they seem to share a sort of symbiotic understanding of each other which one automatically assumes comes from a long personal friendship.

Tough Time

Ridiculusmus in Tough Time, Nice Time

They are perhaps best known to date for their take on The Importance of Being Earnest, an anarchic two man version of Oscar Wilde’s classic play, wittily subtitled ‘A Trivial Comedy by Two Serious People’. But the last piece Ridiculusmus brought to the Barbican (where their new show is currently playing) Tough Time, Nice Time was a weightier, even bleak affair (which is discussed at greater length in Deborah Pearson’s essay for Exeunt on the role of narrative in theatre).


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Honour Bayes

Honour is a freelance writer based in London. As well as contributing to Exeunt she has had articles published on the Guardian arts blog, Total Theatre, Arts Professional, What's On Stage and FEST Magazine. She is Theatre Editor of bi-yearly publication Fourthwall, is worryingly obsessed with Twitter and has her own blog, Theatre Workbook, where she also twitters on regularly.

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