I like to fundraise every Christmas. Last year, I went swimming in the sea in all my clothes. This year, I wanted to do something higher, faster, dumber, stupider, more idiotic than ever. While other fundraisers were busy, running marathons, parachuting, climbing mountains and baking cakes - Bah! Humbug! - I was looking to do something different.
I sat down and did some 'blue sky' thinking. I'm a touring musician with the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain and spend a lot of time on aeroplanes. I'm also very tall (6'8") so flying for me is not only uncomfortable: it's boring.
In 2015, I had celebrated the 50th anniversary of Bob Dylan's video of Subterranean Homesick Blues (the one with the signs) by remaking it entirely in airplane toilets (google it) during a US tour.
As part of an ongoing mid life crisis, which necessitated challenging authority figures and organisations, I decided to set up my own theatre company, which would perform great works of literature, song and dance exclusively in airline toilets: - I decided to call this project -The Airline Toilets Theatre Company (ATTC) .
At first, I tentatively filmed a few speeches and songs, but as the months went by, the scale of my ambition grew, and I found myself smuggling women, horses and even guns through airport security (inflatables!) to star in ever more complicated films.
I've impersonated everyone from Abraham Lincoln to Elvis, James Bond to Julius Caesar, Hamlet to Hendrix. I've ridden across the Black Hills of South Dakota, singing lonesome cowboy ballads, I've sung Nessun Dorma at La Scala, Milan, and I've performed Hamlet's soliloquy in Stratford upon Avon, all in my mind, all in airline toilets and while you kinda had to be there, you will be there, as every show was faithfully recorded on my iPhone.
I am going to upload all twelve films plus a trailer and a 'Making of" over the twelve days of Christmas (25 Dec-6 Jan).
There were plenty of genuinely scary moments along the way, which I'll tell you about. They were all made at a frantic pace with no lighting, retakes, make up, star tantrums, etc: it's guerrilla film making after all, and people need to get to the toilet!
If you're donating, please rest assured that there is nothing obscene or inappropriate in any of these films, they are basically amateur dramatics at 30,000 feet, on a tight budget, by a not very good actor, in a cramped and confined space.
All the flight info is on the titles......
You can view the full Airline Toilets Theatre Company playlist below:
http://bit.ly/2j2c8PO
and read a fuller blurb on my website ...www.tonypenultimate.co.uk/attc
ENJOY and PLEASE DONATE!.
