A one-man one-puppet musical and visual journey through a zombie outbreak, Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep? – at Lighthouse on Friday 7 February – is written and performed by Dorset-based actor-songwriter The Woodlouse (or John Butler to his friends and family).
The show, which he describes as “ridiculous, dark, sometimes gruesome, warm, funny and sad, combines live performance, projected animations, and backing tracks on which he plays all the parts. Having first played the Lyric in Bridport in November 2023, this will be only the second performance.
How did the piece come about?
I didn’t start with the plot; I started with a single song that was written in response to feedback from a story I told at a session in Bridport.
The story ended with an animated corpse, and a friend said it needed a cheerful zombie ukulele song. I liked how it sounded like it was from a musical, and decided to see whether I could write the musical for it to go in. I didn’t plot out the story beforehand, so it kind of evolved a song at a time. Then I had to see how to rearrange those songs into a coherent thing and see where there were gaps in the story. I threw some songs away and wrote new ones to flesh it out.
But why zombies?
I’m not particularly into zombies, but that’s just how the show evolved from the initial story and song. There are some songs in it that I still ask myself where they come from. There’s a song at the end called We Bury Our Dead Again, which has become a singalong hymn, but when I wrote it I was trying to write a serious song about our pasts and how they affect how we act. I was getting nowhere and just stopped then ended up using the same chord sequence and improvising above it and just found those words falling out of my head and thought that was interesting and it became a zombie song.
It’s completely accidental that I started writing a musical about zombies, but once I had started, I wanted to see it through and then I got really interested in thinking how would people react and what would happen if there was an actual zombie outbreak. Can zombies think? Are they conscious? I still don’t know all the answers, but I decided they can think a bit and they can feel, and that definitely comes out in this.
It’s the analytical part of my brain that brings it out and asks what people would do when faced with a zombie outbreak. Most of the show is quite silly, but I hope there’s seriousness in there as well.
It all sounds very different from your other life as a sustainable building consultant – how do the two worlds collide, or do they sit together quite comfortably?
In a way, looking at buildings is a bit like how I wrote the musical – you get presented with the plans and you need to work out what happens with them; how the different bits of information fit together. So, there is a problem-solving overlap between the two worlds.
I don’t want to stop working in green building because it feels important, I enjoy it, and it satisfies the geeky analysis side of my brain. The performance, the music, making theatre really satisfies the other bit of my brain. I need both. After doing a self-build and MSc there was another nearly ten years of not doing any creative things other than playing a little bit at home and I missed it.
They sometimes feel quite separate, but there is an overlap in how I approach things, I guess. They’re both things I feel like I want to do so it’s good for me to do both although it gets complicated trying to work out the time management.
You’ve said that moving to Bridport was key to your rediscovery of performing, what made you get back on stage?
Bridport has got more creativity and performance going on than a town of its size normally would and that’s partly why I chose to move there rather than anywhere else in West Dorset.
I went to an evening of storytelling for adults and was enthralled by it. That led to me taking part in the community ukulele opera Flea! at the Electric Palace. Everybody who did it was completely wrapped up in it, I definitely was. You think a big production like that – there were more than 100 people involved – wouldn’t make doing your own thing seem possible, but somehow it did.
The first performance of Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep? was very well received, how are you feeling about staging its second performance at Lighthouse?
The terrifying thing before the first performance was not knowing how other people would react. I knew I thought bits of it were sad and bits were silly and funny, but I had no idea what other people would react to. I wrote it totally for myself and had to ask myself if I was enjoying it, or was that bit funny, or touching, then just hope that enough other people would react in the same way. I think they did.
Coming to Lighthouse feels even more of a test because the audience at the Lyric was very much a home crowd. At Lighthouse I might know a few, but almost entirely it will be people I don’t know. It feels like an important test… and also quite scary!
:: Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep? Can be seen at Lighthouse on Friday 7 February. Tickets n sale now at https://www.lighthousepoole.co.uk/event/do-zombies-dream-of-undead-sheep/ or call 01202 280000.
(NC)