Fiona Shepherd
Having spent several years cheering up the Fringe with their appealing mix of investigative documentary, harmony singing and homemade props,thenon-propheticallynamed Sh!t Theatre won a Fringe First for their 2016 show, Letters From Windsor House, a witty missive from their own north London block of flats and a wider critique of the housing crisis in London, which now looks remarkably prescient in the light of the Grenfell Tower disaster.
The Sh!ts, Louise Mothersole and Rebecca Biscuit, met at a longform improv group at Queen Mary University of London, bonded in student theatre company Unfinished Theatre then worked down the food chain of flattering company names to found Sh!t Theatre in 2010.
But, after more than a decade as best friends, flatmates, creative partners and finishing each other’s sentences, something had to give and the girls fell out last year. Artistic or personal differences? “Personal” they chorus together.
What, if anything, could repair their friendship? Only a shared love of Dolly Parton. Following a brace of funny shows on serious subjects fuelled by anger, the Sh!ts’ latest Fringe offering comes from a place of rhinestone-encrusted love. Dollywould explores themes of preservation, immortality, cloning and branding through the busty prism of the universally adored country doyenne.
“We’re calling it our B-side prog rock album because it’s all a bit strange and non-linear,” says Biscuit. “The show started off with us talking about semiotics and the idea of cloning, because Dolly the Sheep is named after Dolly. So you get these signifiers of Dolly Parton – tits, rhinestones and blonde hair – with a fake graveyard outside for all of her dead family.”
“Dollywood is so much about preservation,” says Mothersole. “Dolly is preserving this old Tennessee tradition, she’s preserving her home, she’s preserving her image and then there’s this antithesis down the road…”
Thatwouldbethetennesseebody Farm in Knoxville – the University of Tennessee’s Anthropological Research Facility – dedicated to the study of the decomposition of human remains, where corpses are left to rot throughout the facility in a variety of environmental condi-