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Jello Biafra

Join Elz, Jams, Toni and latest arrival Jaime, as they confront the realities of our modern-day class system through live rap, trap and drill. Living in a hostel and battling impossible odds, their worlds are upended by the arrival of a newcomer from a privileged background, with deeply held religious beliefs.

Hi Oli, thank you for talking to The New Current, how have you been keeping during these strange times?

These times have been strange for a lot of people, but as a writer/actor I think it’s a good time to get working and developing your scripts and projects. Isolation and various lockdowns have been a blessing and not a curse for me in that regard.

How does it feel to be heading to Edinburgh Fringe with your Debut Show after everything that has happened?

It feels good, it’s obviously a blessing but myself and Corey Weekes have been working very hard on this script and we feel ready.

Are there going to be any nerves ahead of your first show at The Pleasance?

Not necessarily nerves, we’ll be building confidence each day from the graft we put in during rehearsals and hopefully we’re more concerned about telling the story as a collective rather than worrying about individual nerves.

One of the vital aspects of Edfringe is The Royal Mile during August. Have you got your show's sales patter down or are you still tweaking it?

I’ve actually had the experience of selling tickets for my first play I took to the fringe back in 2018, this time will be a lot less stressful thanks to the support from The Pleasance. I think the play sells itself.

Can you tell me a little bit about Rapsody, what can we expect?

Audiences will Join Elz, Jams, Toni and latest arrival Jaime, as they confront the realities of our modern-day class system through live rap, trap and drill.

Living in a hostel and battling impossible odds from the beginning, their worlds are upended by the arrival of a newcomer from a privileged background, with deeply held religious beliefs. As the dynamics of the hostel shift, all four struggle to get by, rapping the things they can't bring themselves to say.

When you preview a show how much does it change before a major festival and do you still allow yourself some flexibility once a run has started?

They’ll be flexibility throughout, we like to keep things loose but they’ll be a very tight fringe version of Rapsody which we will present to you, a few changes here and there but nothing major during the run.