Interviews: Salty Brine & Skank Sinatra

Set to a “brash, brassy” soundtrack, These are the Contents of my Head (The Annie Lennox Show) invites a handful of influences to wander through the performance. There’s the titular Annie Lennox – specifically, her 1992 solo album Diva; Edna, the protagonist of Kate Chopin’s powerhouse novel The Awakening; Judy Garland; the performer’s mother; and finally Salty Brine himself.

“I pull out of myself all the biggest, grandest, most divine personality traits that I have,” Brine says. “The part of me that wants to go to a cocktail party and hold court, and make everybody laugh. You’re meeting the diva.”

This performance is one of Brine’s Living Record Collection shows: a series in which he picks an album that’s meaningful to him and uses it to tell a story through each of the songs. Having covered Cyndi Lauper, Radiohead and the Beatles in the past, now it’s Lennox’s turn.

“I'm playing with Annie Lennox's idea of the diva, taking on this persona of ‘diva’: the feather headdress and her looking in the mirror and touching her face and the make-up. She’d been in Eurythmics for ten years before this, and had become this persona. And I’m thinking, Where does my diva come from? It's from all these women who have touched me in different ways throughout my life.”

Something that interests Brine is the presentation of the diva, who is fabulous, effervescent, and who moves through the world with grace and ease – and how this relates to the authentic self. Who is underneath the glamour?

“And how do we come through that to be human, be messy, be angry and to understand that’s okay?” he ponders. “In every one of my shows I play some variation of myself. It’s often drag-related, sometimes it’s boy drag, but in this show I am the most drag diva. Drag is often more authentic. You reach in and you pull out something really true about yourself, and it lets you say or do things that you wouldn’t normally say or do.”

Drag as an expression of authenticity is something cabaret performer Skank Sinatra also explores.

Skank Sinatra / photo by Fudz Qazi

“It’s ironic because there's ten times more layers of make-up and costume and wig and heels and production. So you'd think authenticity would get lost, but it really shines through,” he says.

His show is also autobiographic; he uses Frank Sinatra songs as a soundtrack to stories about living in South Africa and all over Australia – and, tantalisingly, a tale of successfully getting into Berghain. However, Sinatra grapples with what the audience expects from a drag or cabaret show, particularly after the mainstreamification of Drag Race.

“Do I have to do death drops and hyperpop remixes of modern songs to satiate the audience’s want for that electric drag queen?”

No, as it happens. He found his cabaret niche while studying at drama school, realising it’s more important to try not to do something based on what he thinks the audience will like.

“I can only speak to what I enjoy watching. [Drag] isn’t a facade or protection. As soon as I pop on that stiletto, that’s where the magic happens.”

The show Sinatra is bringing to this year’s Fringe is an extension of his first foray into full-length shows back in 2016. Back then, it was called Frankly Hank, and he took on the persona of a misogynist who sang charming love songs, but whose behind-closed-doors behaviour didn’t correlate with his smooth on-stage character.

“Although this show is quite different, it was born there and I’ve come back to it now, years later. I wanted to revisit it because I always felt like I had unfinished business with that show. Now I’ve married all the different worlds together in an ultimate showcase of jazz, singing, dancing, drag, cabaret, comedy and theatre.”

A real moment of insight for Sinatra came while studying under esteemed master clown Philippe Gaulier. One day, Sinatra joked about having to find his straight man persona to charm his scene partner, “Then [Gaulier] said, ‘No, never try to get rid of your homosexuality. It is a spark that you have.’ That hit hard and really helped me on my journey to embracing all the realms of femininity and queerness in my work.”

Capturing this feeling of genuineness and forging a real connection with the audience is what both performers are hoping to get out of the Fringe.

“I’m standing up there in front of them saying, ‘I'm not good at it. It's really hard and it's really scary',” says Brine. “But I would love it if the audience walked out of the theatre asking themselves how they could be more bravely true to who they are.”