Welcome back to the Porpo's Almanac. This is Andy. Today we're joined by

Victoria Melody, a comedian and artist out of Bristol, UK.

She studies the anthropology of England's niche communities, whether it's pigeon fancying or, in her most recent work, The Diggers.

She calls this project her most ambitious community project to date, and we talk about why that's the case,

including incorporating local members of the community to make this happen. She stumbled upon

the diggers by accident. We'll dig into how this happened, where the project's going, and why it

matters so much in this episode. If you enjoy her work, she's going to be touring

in the United States next April. For more information, check the links below. With that, let's jump in.

Victoria, thanks so much for joining us. So I stumbled across your show, and I've never heard of anything like this.

And I'm so curious, like, what I want to know exactly like, what was the process of being like,

I need to make a show out of the diggers in Gerard Winstonley.

So like, tell me about that a little bit.

Okay. It's quite a journey

this show. So if I start a little bit about what I do, about my background. Sure, yeah, yeah.

I am a artist. I'm a stand-up comedian, and make theatre and my topics and research is all anthropological.

So I embed myself into Britain's niche communities like pigeon fanciers.

They're the people that race pigeons, beauty queens.

And I actually become these things. You know, I'll become a championship dog show handler.

I'll become a funeral director. And I embed myself with these enthusiasts and hobbyists for a few years and then I make shows about it and so

this show was meant to be about historical reenactment and I joined a reenactment

society but then it took yeah it took a bit of a turn.

It changed.

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