Sean M Whelan and The Mime Set

After twice having The Mime Set perform at Babble, his monthly spoken word event, in 2004, Sean M. Whelan was invited to read his poetry during the band's residency at Melbourne's Builder's Arms Hotel in April 2005. An idea born of drunken mutual admiration, our first show 'Death To Your Dreams' started with the discovery of clear correspondences between Sean's surreal romantic poetry and the band's textured, emotional music. With a short deadline, we set to work, creating a complete show in four months for the 2005 Melbourne Fringe Festival.

New music was improvised to existing poetry and new poetry was written to existing songs, notably in the piece 'Honey O' where Sean responded to an existing narrative of relationship breakdown, giving the piece the perspective of two voices responding to each other's bewilderment and sadness. These pieces became the show 'Death To Your Dreams'.

Transcending poetic and musical genre, we have created a space where spoken word can rock with tensile strength and music breathes naturally around words and lyrics. The show was well received and led to performance invitations from The Melbourne Emerging Writer's Festival, Overload Poetry Festival, Going Down Swinging and Manchester Lane.

With the addition of multi-instrumentalist, Jon Shannon, and with Melbourne Fringe 2006 approaching, a second show was conceived, 'LCUK: Falling In and Out of Luck'. The collaboration evolved with all of us having a hand in composition, even exploring new instruments, while the text became more fluid, improvised in one piece and divided up in others to create new perspectives. We were challenged to find new ways of collaborating, communicating and performing that resulted in a greater narrative flexibility and depth and our second successful show.

We've just taken both shows to New Zealand for the Wellington Fringe Festival and Paekakariki's Out There! Fringe Festival where we met some amazing people and played life-affirming shows. We're heading to Adelaide next month for the famous Adelaide Fringe Festival, plus we've been invited to headline Montreal's Voix d'Americas spoken word festival next February.

In the next few years, we hope to travel Australia, Europe and North America with the shows and continue to create satisfying, challenging, visceral and entertaining spoken word and music collaborations.

Sean M Whelan and The Mime Set
perform selections from Death To Your Dreams and LCUK
Adelaide Fringe Festival
Saturday March 17 at The Jade Monkey, 6.30pm
29a Twin St, Adelaide, SA, Australia
Tickets $10 from Fringe Tix or at the door