For the last nine years, Club Silencio has been staging extraordinary shows in various Brighton venues. I remember seeing my first one in a sex dungeon in Kemptown and feeling as if I had walked into one of the transgressive early films of John Waters. The next time I saw them they’d built a giant television set in the Phoenix Art Space, where they performed a surreal version of Blind Date, in which a water phobic contestant won a date with the Creature from Hove Lagoon. Then they turned the Arcobaleno bar into a pool party set in hell.

You can see Club Silencio yourself this December, in the Latest Music bar in Manchester St, performing My Bloody Pantomime (“Pantomime characters are quaking in their stilettos as a serial killer is picking them off one by one”). We are promised “gags, gore and a giant eyeball in this pantomime of epic proportions.” Stuart says this is the first Club Silencio show to feature panto characters: “However, most of them are dead!” 

I asked Stuart how it all began. “Silencio was created back in 2015. I’d been spending some nights at Subline, at the time Brighton’s only men-only sex dungeon, with my friend John Tovey. We loved it down there and saw loads of possibility for the subterranean space. The idea was to subvert the space by making it a very classy night. Dressing up in fancy clothes was encouraged, and the space was dressed with frilly lamp shades. We had a toilet attendant, who recited poetry, and a gimp in a tuxedo who walked around with doughnuts on a silver tray. I booked friends – mostly female folk singers – to play, as they brought something unique to the dank and seedy space, and I dressed up as a clown, and sang songs between the acts. For the first show I didn’t really have many acts, so I made up sketches involving puppets, and got friends to wear masks and lip-sync to weird audio clips.”

As for the Silencio name, Stuart says, “I had been to Paris that year and really wanted to go to David Lynch’s nightclub, Club Silencio, named after the club in his film Mulholland Drive. However, it was very expensive to get in and I couldn’t afford it at the time. So, irked by the exclusiveness of it, when it came to picking a name for my own club night, I chose that as a bit of a screw you to David, because Brighton’s Club Silencio was going to be a cheap and more subversive space.

John was my chief in command, and he was brilliant at dressing the room. My friend Joe worked with me in a kitchen at the time, and I persuaded him to be the gimp for the night. My friend Louis was the toilet attendant, and Juno was happy to DJ. Another friend, Ralph, ate doughnuts slowly to a weird advert for Krispy Kreme I’d made (the joke was they were our sponsors). I loved the idea that anyone who wanted to get involved could. After that lots of amazing performers, musicians, actors and creatives have come and gone over the nine years that followed, but John, Misha, Kit, Damian, Tommy, Jon, and Juno, have been at the core of Silencio.”

Alongside Stuart, the main writer is the novelist and actress Juno Dawson. Juno played Dorothy in Club Silencio’s wonderful musical, Return Again to Oz, a hit show in last year’s fringe. You can listen to the songs from the show on Bandcamp.

The regular club host is Jon Griffin, who does an uncanny impression of Death from Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. Jon writes his own satirical monologues for the shows, and is so good at being Death that he has since taken the character into stand-up comedy clubs. He’s a composer, like Stuart, and they co-write the songs for the shows.

For Pride in 2019, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, Stuart and Juno created Equality of the Daleks. Juno, author of several Dr Who related books, got to play the doctor in a time travelling investigation of how the brick that started the riots was thrown. The brick thrower was a sexually confused dalek.

I wondered if the shows are a reaction to the way Brighton Pride has become corporate and mainstream? “Well, I thought the gay scene was crap, and Pride was just an extension of that. It had nothing to offer me and made me feel unwelcome because I didn’t conform to the idea of what a gay man should be like. I rejected it, and thus was an outsider from my tribe, so in the end I made my own tribe. Now queer outsiders are very in vogue, and there’s loads of great nights that cater to them.”

For the last nine years, Club Silencio’s magnificent sets, props and costumes have been made by Kit Yellery (Odd Fabrication on Instagram). Stuart says, “Kit is incredible and one of the things I always loved was arriving at the venue and seeing what amazing things she’d made. She really is a genius. Last year was her final show with us, and it feels very strange not to have her involved now.”

Club Silencio shows are inclusive, welcoming and immersive. Audience members are encouraged to dress up and take part in surreal games and competitions.  There’s usually an interval, when the actors pose for life drawing sessions, with prizes at the end. 

Next year will be Club Silencio’s tenth anniversary, and Stuart says he has big plans for the celebration: “I can say no more but it will be something special.” Meanwhile, we have My Bloody Pantomime to look forward too – guaranteed to be a highlight of the festive season. 

l http://www.outsavvy.com/event/22586/club-silencio-presents-my-bloody-pantomime

l http://www.instagram.com/clubsilenciobrighton

l https://iamelliotlee.wixsite.com/stuart-warwick

l https://www.jonhgriffin.com

l http://www.junodawson.com

l http://www.instagram.com/oddfabrication

l https://clubsilencio2.bandcamp.com/album/return-again-to-oz-original-cast-soundtrack