New collective Flaming Carnations push boundaries with their debut works

Flaming Carnations is a newly launched production company and arts collective founded by four local and intersectionally diverse emerging artists.

The company was founded with the goal of supporting, uplifting, and drawing attention to the exploding independent arts scene of Meanjin/Brisbane.

More specifically, they seek to see diverse creatives working regularly and getting paid well for that work. As part of this mission, they are bringing two theatre works to this year’s Fringe Brisbane festival; Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind and A Simple Little Knot.

Developed by Chicago performance group, The Neo-Futurists, and opening back in 1988, ‘Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind’ continues to play as the longest-running show in Chicago history. The production is a zany ensemble experiment in presenting “30 Plays in 60 Minutes.”

Each short play (ranging from the comic, to the tragic, to the personal, to the abstract) is performed in a random, chaotic
order as determined by the audience, who race alongside the cast against a timer counting down the seconds to zero.

A Simple Little Knot: “Dearest Father, you asked me recently why I claim to be afraid of you…” Franz Kafka had always described his relationship with his father like a trial, a judgment or a sentence. In his 1919 exegesis, ‘Dearest Father’, he wrote a scathing 103 pages that detailed the complex history of their relationship, from birth to near-death.

The letter was never read. Over a hundred years on, in this new, Queer adaptation, a young man grapples with his appearance, sexuality, relationships and identity, the Oxford comma and a rotting apple, all in an attempt to reconcile the fact that he is positively, definitely, absolutely and irrevocably not his father’s son.

Tickets can be booked via the Flaming Carnations website. 

Media release supplied.