AMY Saunders began her performance career as an extrovert teenager flyerer (that’s someone who hands out flyers) at Camden Town Tube. Having travelled Europe, Canada and Australia, and gathered her troupe of eccentrics, she is returning to her old stomping ground as Miss Behave, variety act extraordinaire – with a penchant for swallowing sharp objects.
Her experience of advertising debauchery in Camden clubs and punk clothing from market stalls came in useful when tackling the fetish scene.
Before she had even reached 18 she was clambering atop nightclub tables, while rubber-clad and brandishing a steely sword that she had mastered how to swallow through reading a book. When she did it to herself during a show with the Royal Opera company she spent the rest of the night in hospital. “I swallowed my sword same as usual but that evening I threw up my red wine and realised it was blood. It was just bad luck. The margin for error is very small – actually it’s minute.”
Also performing in her cabaret at the Roundhouse is belly-gyrating Kalki Hula Girl, slapstick collective Spymonkey, goddess of hell-fire Lucifire, and comedy crooner Frank Sanazi who in the past has drawn parallels between neo-liberal autocracy and fundamentalism to the tune of Strangers In The Night.
In keeping with the bohemian performance art dream, today’s young flyerers could well be tomorrow’s crowd-pleasers.
Miss Behave is calling on locals to audition for a slot in the 24-show run. Only diabolical theatrical mischievous deviants need apply.
Sara Newman
* Miss Behave’s Variety Night is at the Roundhouse, Chalk Farm Road, NW1, from July 31-
August 24. 0844 482 8008