I was invited to photograph Filthy Talk for Troubled Times in 2015 at the venue in Edinburgh during rehearsals for The Festival Fringe. Matthew Lillard, whom I recognised from the Scream movie, directed. Holly Williams (see below) mentioned TV actresses Zibby Allen and Erin Pineda in the cast.
One of the photographs I took was in The Times, and I remember thinking – Oh, that’s what it takes to get a photo in The Times. I thought it was well-nigh impossible unless you were X, with skillset Y.
I googled the play just now and this first thing that came up was a review by Holly Williams, and she wasn’t too positive about it.
Why revive Neil LaBute’s 1990 debut play? It’s a short, unpleasant, rarely-performed piece set in a strip club, where dumb, cruel men and a couple of waitresses banter, each breaking out to address the audience with tales supposed to be out-there in their honesty. Maybe they had bite 25 years ago; now they reek of cliché.
For me, I was surprised that the shots came out as they did, given that we were in a dark theatre and I had a fixed lens Fuji X100s shooting at ISO 800 and no additional lighting.
