Bite Me is ready to tour.
Show description
Yana Alana is a spoken word artiste, eccentric dancer and chanteuse extraordinaire. Bite Me is her first one-woman show and is a comic and poignant study of dysfunctional relationships.
Yana Alana greets the audience from a high backed chair, sipping on a glass of red, while a gramophone tinkles out an old time tune. Impeccably dressed in a grey and black skirted suit, her conservative appearance is shattered when she opens the show with a poem from her apparently famous book ‘If you were a carrot I would have cum by now’.
“Her timing and tone are precise and carefully used to drive every sharpened jibe into the heart of chauvinists oppressors everywhere.” Waiting in the Wings
With her biting wit and overtly political poetry she leaves no social groups unnamed, lashing out at ticket inspectors, Young Liberals, Scientologists and even therapists.
Yana Alana is accompanied by her brilliant and under-appreciated band Tha Paranas. They musically weave their way through the songs and poetry, heightening the whole experience. Tha Paranas, Bec Beat on Percussion, Ania Reynolds on Keys and Frances Evans on Double Bass are subjugated to Yana’s narcissistic tendencies with great comic effect. Yana fuelled by her need for total control squashes the trio at every opportunity, providing hilarious interludes of circus and superb examples of ostracism.
“They are naughty children to Yana’s haughty mistress, and every meddlesome mood adds to the increasing chaos of the cabaret.” Waiting in the Wings
As Yana reveals more intimate details of her mental health and love life through poetry and song, she gradually looses her grip on reality and becomes increasingly agitated. Her desperate attempts to connect with Tha Paranas and the audience embarrassingly fail and she quickly flips from needy to vicious, driving the Paranas to despair. This provides the audience with an insight into the fragile side of this solipsistic diva. But before any one is able to empathies Yana throws herself into a no holds barred rave and full-blown tantrum.
Like any great damaged Diva, Yana Alana knows the show must go on. Accompanied by Tha Paranas she produces two showstopper songs and her most controversial poem ‘Cunt’.
“There is something wonderful, still, about hearing a woman elevate her vagina to a thing of poetry, of wonder, of respect, of joy, of soulful blues.”Waiting in the Wings
For the last song of the night, Sarah Ward drops the character and sings a delicate and dramatic arrangement of the song made famous by Shirley Bassey ‘History Repeating’, accompanied by Tha Paranas with Bec Beat on vibraphone.
