Chicks with tricks
After a sell-out May season, Six Quick Chicks gear up to do it again. Head 'Chick Vashti Hughes tells Andrew P Street all about it
Six Quick Chicks might have wound up a huge season at the Riverside Theatres a month ago, but it doesn't make it any easier to explain to the unfamiliar. "Because of the style of our show it can be difficult to articulate what it is we do," Hughes laughs. "And the acts do change. With upcoming shows, some of the performers will be the same, but they'll be doing different acts. But all of them are basically character-driven, all of [the performers] come from different performance background: some come from circus, some are singers. Jackie Loeb comes from stand-up comedy and I come from more of a theatre background. So with what we call comedy-cabaret, everyone has their own bent on what they do."
Six Quick Chicks is in some ways the culmination of Hughes' performance history: "I have put together many cabaret nights over the years, which often ended up being a big mish-mash of a variety night," she explains. "I was looking at something that had a bit more longevity, choosing a core of people and also choosing all women: so it's fun for us to do, and it's easier to sell it, in a way. And the more that we keep going on with it the more people start to recognise the name and understand the concept of the show. And it's something I'm looking forward to doing for a long time: we've already been going for a year and a half and I still feel like it's early days."
That's not least because these Chicks are all about keeping it fresh. "It's all about creating new works, so I asked people to be a part of it because I knew they already had some sort of repertoire of work. I thought it would be good if every time we did a new season there were new characters and concepts, and I'm relying on their qualities as a performer and trusting them to create something fabulous that an audience will like - because we don't know what each other will come up with next."
And while the new season is set to begin, Hughes is already looking to the future. "It'd be great to do festivals and travel outside of Sydney. We actually went down to the Adelaide Fringe this year: we were in the Garden Of Unearthly Delights in that terrible heatwave, so that was a bit of a challenge," she laughs. "It was very hot weather and it was full of drunk bogans, so god help these little chicks doing their performance. But they packed in! I don't know that they understood what we were doing, but they stayed to the end, clapped, and they all came back the next night."
And what can the complete newcomer expect? "There are six of us, each of us has ten minutes or less to do their bit, and I'm the MC, Mavis Brown. I host the night: I kick it off with a song and introduce each act, and talk to the audience as well. If the audience is getting a little too relaxed and complacent, I like to scare them a bit," she laughs wickedly. "Treat 'em mean!"
Six Quick Chicks returns to the Riverside Theatres on Friday 4, 11, 18 and 25 July.