Drag, puppets, and queer joy: 'Diana: the Untold and Untrue Story' comes to Amsterdam
Linus Karp, creator and star of Diana: the Untold and Untrue Story still doesn’t know how to characterize the show despite being three years into its run. In a world saturated with Princess Diana stories, this one is unlike any other, combining drag, multimedia, audience interaction, puppetry, and a lot of queer joy. The show will be staged at the Podium Mozaiek Theater in Amsterdam on Monday.
Diana is one of three back-to-back successes from Karp’s company, Awkward Productions, which he founded with his creative and life partner, Joseph Martin. The company's most successful shows all satarize pop culture moments, with two other plays lovingly taking aim at the trial surrounding Gwyneth Paltrow's skiing accident, and the much disliked 2019 film based on the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, Cats.
Karp sat down this week with Zack Newmark of the Dam Yankee podcast, in partnership with NL Times. They discuss an audience participation hack and Karp's road to the stage from small-town Sweden.
Dam Yankee: Tell us how you managed to put the show on with a smaller budget.
Linus Karp: We found ways to incorporate the characters without adding actors. That’s where a lot of the ideas for puppetry and multimedia and also audience participation came from. There are actually 14 audience roles in the show where people from the audience get cast and have to go up on stage and deliver some of the lines. I think this is really fun and makes each show quite unique, because you never know what your supporting cast is going to be like.
DY: Do your audience participants ever improvise or take you off in different directions?
LK: A little bit, though we tend not to give them too much room because we want to make sure that they feel quite safe. We make it quite clear what we want them to do. But sometimes, you never know what you're going to get. Sometimes, you get someone who's a performer who hasn't been on stage for a while and they want to really take their moment. Sometimes, you get someone who may have had a couple too many drinks and you never know what they're going to do. But it's been amazing to see.
Before we opened the show, I was quite worried about relying on this much audience participation. I didn't know if people were going to be up for it or be able to deliver. People always end up really stepping up and it's amazing the kind of things they do and the performances they give and how they all come together and support the people who go up on stage as well. So that feels very special.
DY: How does one go from growing up in a small village in Sweden to portraying Gwyneth Paltrow and Princess Diana in satirical farces on stage?
LK: The key ingredient is delusion. I think, I am going to be a princess. I am going to be a Hollywood star. I'm not going to let my gender or nationality stop me. I've lived in London for 12 years now. I feel like I've had pretty much my entire adult life in London. I think that's probably helped. Being around the theater scene in London and things like that.
I feel like being a foreign actor and also being queer and wanting to do weird things means that you're so rarely cast for the things you want to do, which is sort of how the entire thing started with me setting up my own theater company and creating my own shows. I wanted to do things and so often I was only seen for some foreign receptionist with one line or whatever and I just felt like I could do more than that. So, I started creating my own work, which has worked out quite well so far. Just don't give people a choice. I tell them I'm Princess Diana or Gwyneth Paltrow and they just have to go along with it.
Diana: The Untold and Untrue Story comes to Amsterdam West’s Podium Mozaiek Theater on Monday, March 31. Tickets can be can be purchased for 35 euros.
Listen to this entire episode of Dam Yankee wherever you get your podcasts, or watch the full videos on YouTube. Karp goes on to discuss middle child syndrome and his upcoming nuptials!
