WONKY ORGANISED CHAOS FROM MARGATE

W O N K Y   
Words by Ben Dover
Photographs by Suzi Side   
Trailer directed by Ryan Clifford
Music and trailer edit by Richard Torry

THE WHO
Ryan Clifford. Actor.                                        

THE WHAT
DIY theatre company. Raw. Real

THE WHERE
Margate, Kent, UK. End of the world.

THE WHY
Sick of posh RADA gits playing ‘us’.

THE HOW
Improvisation. Organised chaos.

FOREPLAY
The punk pilot trailer for WONKY is far from what’s being streamed by the providers who believe they know best. Clifford’s vision challenges.

‘There’s nothing quite so seductive as the unexpected,’ actor Ryan Clifford states, eighteen months on after forming his unique theatre company named WONKY.
The VO for a television project that is both unsettling and hilarious at the same time, conceived and directed by Clifford, contains jigsaw fragments that break through as  a cast of Margate no-hopers swagger and stagger through the streets. 

These subjects, discovered through chance encounters in which Clifford lured them towards his weekly drama group in a church hall, developed through regular improvisation sessions, glue as a gang. They want to play with you, mess with your head. They’re that type.

The pilot feels like a confession. Prayer gone wrong.

bending over for digital wankers they flash on cams for coins

boozer bargain bonanza

a girls gotta eat                                             

chav wet dream 

snowflake speeches
hitting apple keys                                          

vacant behind tall windows
local drunks fighting

house prices soar

tapas                                                                 

turmeric latte

phoney graffiti 

popping pills

kebab on the way to bed

As Clifford’s cast of dysfunctional exhibitionists cavort past the glass fronts of shut-down stores, Clifford’s droned monologue suggests corpses rotting on the slimy thoroughfare of the seaside town of rotten ol’ Margate. 

Akin to Bowie’s Future Legend, Clifford’s vibe is of degeneration, where fleas the size of rats suck on rats the size of cats. Margate, a British seaside town of peoploids splitting into small tribes, coverting the highest of the poorly-constructed skyscrapers.

INTERVIEW

The man has walked me from Margate BR to the edge of the Margate’s nudist beach.A striptease begins. Off with his red hoodie.’I’m here because I got to the point where I thought London can just fuck off,’ Clifford spits.The striptease begins. Jeans. DisIstressed blue denim. Unfurled. Down. Off.

No underwear. Boots suited to a copper. Unlaced. Off.

No socks.

Now naked as the day he was born.

‘Lured by the sea and affordability, I came to Margate on the train, days before Lockdown #1 hit. Just me and the dog. A suitcase.’

Clifford stares into a carton of orange juice.
‘My perspective? Authenticity from artists in the metropolis fizzled long ago. London’s final curtain had fallen hard on me just before Covid made passive prisoners of the nation. Feeling like a rodent in a control game, I needed to escape, get away from the rat race.’

‘From one toilet to another. The establishment art world has set up shop just a spit from Margate’s filtered sandy shores. Tourism is on the up again. People believe what they read in the silly Sunday supplements. The well-heeled survey the town with puffed up chests, considering the options. Real estate gluttony.’

Clifford swallows a couple of slugs of juice, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. I wonder about his ethnicity, mixed ethnicity, but don’t ask.

‘The galleries buzz like annoying bluebottles. They are exclusive and not for the working class. Their objects of prestige raise house prices more than emotions. Where’s the transcendence? How can new ideas be developed when they have to appeal to corporate interests? There’s little risk from today’s serious youth of outsiders.’

Clifford speaks in a candid manner. When I play back the tape of our conversation, his words feel so crafted. Thought grenades.

‘The virtue of this seaside town in flux is its working-class spirit. A friendliness. There’s a charged raw street banter and let’s-have-a-good time attitude, even if the stinking ship is sinking.’
Poppered up, shirts off, bikinis on the high street, bag of chips and neon amusements, Margs is dizzy, dangerous, common as muck and very sexy as Autumn now hits. 
‘I’ve really been on a mission right from the start of this year. I’m here to help the locals in (laughs) a spot of art class war before it’s all too late. A new chapter of my life started. I want to stir things up a bit.’

Skin like caramel. Heads keep turning, looking my host’s way.
‘I’ve gained an affinity with the locals in their survival struggle and search for adventure. Being on the dole, I couldn’t sit around in cafés drinking expensive coffees that had been sourced by Abyssinian nuns and listening to the clientele moan on with their executive problems. Truth be told, I walked the streets penniless in hope of a miracle afar from this movement obsessed with trending on social media, pimping their profiles, enacting their virtual protest.’
Carton finished, slung to one side.

‘So, what’s really happening here in Kent, where the tide is so often brown? Constant renovation projects are in full swing and it’s Air B ‘n’ en masse as noses get sniffy. A graffiti cutesy Crowley cat is sprayed on every pillar and post with slogans like ‘far out’. Even Banksy would cringe. Sanctioned vandalism. I smirk in despair. This is normal.’

A guy walks past, checks Clifford out, every inch. Says ‘I would.’ That guy’s girlfriend laughs. She probably would too. 

‘ What makes me laugh is that a ramshackle refugee dwelling is now exchanged for wooden shutter blinds, plantation, ‘n’ shiny CCTV cameras to feel secure as Margs can get messy.’
The twee-as-fuck hundred-year-old rollercoaster is back at Dreamland. Pop stars of times gone by croak out their chart-toppers over the brick chimneys for as much as management can source. Hollywood is down on a visit scouting locations. Fickle celebrities, hipsters and investors are all sniffing around for that pound note before the hype or cash disappears. 

‘Dream a different reality, that’s what I did. The universe responded. Provided a vision. I needed a cast who’d never heard of RADA nor the likes of United Agents. 
Clifford laughs out loud as he pulls on his red hoodie.

‘The first of the crew was a leggy beauty with no teeth in skimpy fetish wear that transcended gender and labels. There they were, getting the local branch of Nationwide bank dancing to house music blaring from their boombox. Lightning struck. We became muckers. I was swiftly introduced to the local homeless, drunks and crackheads, born and bred in postcode CT9. Cosmic discourse and ideas of agitation fell out of the dazzling Turner sky.’

On go to jeans. Striptease in reverse. Wiggling of the hips. That denim fits snugly.
‘I recorded a tune entitled Bored at a local ska studio with a mum of two from the council estate. Then the cast climbed out of the woodwork. The broken, who had put their dreams long behind them. In my eyes, the beautiful people of this world, with their flaws, rich life stories, vulnerabilities and hearts on their worn sleeves. They’re all in the pilot, the trailer.’

Lacing of those Met Police boots.
‘I trained as an actor at nineteen in the Method at London’s Drama Centre on a scholarship from Anthony Hopkins. Stanislavski, Uta Hagen, Joan Littlewood and all that realist jazz. But times have changed. Today’s crew of aspiring thespians long to be brand ambassadors, which says it all. Mike Leigh style, I spent months running a weekly class improvising and creating characters for each of my wonky coastal crew. I filmed the whole process whilst goading these street stars along.’
‘Over the summer months, a documentary photographer friend and I set up situations and stunts all over Margate and filmed the show. Wonky the punk pilot was born. It was an easy labour because we did it for fun, not money. Everyone had full creative rein. Authentic creative chaos. No script, ever. No interference from some Soho-based production company. We kept it moving, fresh, without any thought of a career.’

‘Right now I’ve got seven episodes in the can. Me and avant-garde wizard Richard Torry are on the edit of Wonky as I write this in his Old Compton Street flat. A large photograph of Leigh Bowery looms over us from their days together in the band, Minty. I’m in the right hands. Whilst he rolls a fag on a break we laugh at clips from early John Waters movies, giggling at The Dashers.’

‘Wonky is a story that’s not been told. The cast, characters on the dole, on the rampage and on Universal Credit. Unfashionably sleazy and forever trying to nick a few quid, no morals required. Shoplifting is a right.’

Clifford stands. Clears his throat. Spits. Laughs. He now dominates the nudist beach, as he introduces all the key Wonky characters.
‘True deviants, they saunter carefree in crime, winding up a medicated cop called Minty who goes about armed with a vegetable truncheon. Her illegitimate son, Leo, is forever chasing his tail. A builder, hustler, a geezer who turns on the charm and loves mum’s bread pudding. Then there’s 

Candy, Leo’s childhood bitch with benefits, mum to nine kids with different dads. She gets by thanks to exotic cam shows and selling on what she steals to order. Her sidekick is the leggy Chantelle, who once lived in a forest, naked in the breeze, swinging through the trees. Bending gender, she only dons a label for a massage punter. Sells a bit of hash by day, chats long hours into the night with aliens.’

‘The town’s glorious gob is Gloria, a mouthy landlady from oop north who leaves her fat husband Barry for a lesbian on meetaminge.com. Lilly, her East End confidante, sings pubs songs and strangles a reporter because a condescending attitude that couldn’t be stomached. 

The glamorous Isobel is a mysterious, romantic, passionate French spirit. Does she practice witchcraft? Is she a double agent who’s gonna grass them up? The cast are all truly off-key, unhinged. Wonky. And so am I.’

View the Wonky trailer here

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pJj84JcKMAw