I thought I'd use this little pocket of cyberspace to eschew reviews for a moment and write a little on the performance I'm currently working on.
It's with a very new company called Lifeguard Productions, set up by Farah Merani, who I met at a TAMASHA training course. Farah asked me if I'd be interested in directing a devised project she was trying to get off the ground, and I said...yes.
We've been working from a book of poems called Les Chansons de Bilitis, with a group of five women (the performance at the moment has four as the delightful Ari Phillips has been busy with new job).
We're grappling with the curious identity crisis behind the writing of the poems - passed off as the discovered works of an ancient Greek poetess but actually the imaginings of a middle aged French man in 1894 - and once we knew about the authorship of the poems, the whole project became about 'who speaks for women?'
We realised that we couldn't 'perform' the story of Bilitis, because we didn't really believe it. It was essentially a series of changing relationships between identity and desire: the shifting position that her body takes with the world around it. Childhood and openness; first desire and nervousness; discovering sex and wanting to fuck the world; giving yourself totally, wildly, and becoming jealous, possessive, betrayed.
These are all somewhat conventional patterns of behaviours - or relational norms - which women are still encouraged to perform. But in 2011, we're encouraged to perform these shifting positions by the media in all its forms, from newspaper articles to magazine covers to pop videos to self-help books. Like Louys' presence in the Chansons de Bilitis, these media are the shadowy voices of authority that stand behind our experiences of desire and instinct, shaping not only how we communicate them - but perhaps dictating how we feel and act in the first place.
So the project as it stands at the moment is a summary, a collage of observations, of contemporary 'authority' figures which dictate how or what women should feel as they grow. This is done physically by the performers: we see them pluck at their bodies in an invisible mirror; be transformed from nervous self-conscious wrecks into a punching army of aggression and 'self-assertion' (fascistically, utterly controlled by one leader); turn everyday situations of irritation and pressure into pop idol dance moves. This is paired with the equivalent poem or moment from Louys' shaping of Bilitis' life.
In many ways, we're playing into dangerous hands here - because rather than straight out rejecting these existing authorities and their versions of womanhood, we're trying to adopt them without getting lost or brainwashed. It's risky: but I want to push further into these shapes and 'versions' of womanhood, to find a truer and realer voice, a voice which emerges through the exhaustion of these conventions and cliches.
Because I think that if you don't address what exists, if you start as if none of these other patterns and version influence you and bombard you every day, you'll just self-consciously replicate them. You have to know the rules - or at least recognise them - before you can break them.
Tonight's the last performance of part one - the 'collage of observations' on who speaks for women - at the New Diorama Theatre. I've been writing a few blogs on the rehearsal process on the company website here (designed by Dylan Spencer-Davidson). And there'll be more. Brain is whirring constantly so over the weekend expect some knee-jerk missives (and hopefully a few more reflective ones) on where we go next. Have got lots of spinning-top thoughts and am figuring out which ones to keep whirring.
It's with a very new company called Lifeguard Productions, set up by Farah Merani, who I met at a TAMASHA training course. Farah asked me if I'd be interested in directing a devised project she was trying to get off the ground, and I said...yes.
We've been working from a book of poems called Les Chansons de Bilitis, with a group of five women (the performance at the moment has four as the delightful Ari Phillips has been busy with new job).
We're grappling with the curious identity crisis behind the writing of the poems - passed off as the discovered works of an ancient Greek poetess but actually the imaginings of a middle aged French man in 1894 - and once we knew about the authorship of the poems, the whole project became about 'who speaks for women?'
We realised that we couldn't 'perform' the story of Bilitis, because we didn't really believe it. It was essentially a series of changing relationships between identity and desire: the shifting position that her body takes with the world around it. Childhood and openness; first desire and nervousness; discovering sex and wanting to fuck the world; giving yourself totally, wildly, and becoming jealous, possessive, betrayed.
These are all somewhat conventional patterns of behaviours - or relational norms - which women are still encouraged to perform. But in 2011, we're encouraged to perform these shifting positions by the media in all its forms, from newspaper articles to magazine covers to pop videos to self-help books. Like Louys' presence in the Chansons de Bilitis, these media are the shadowy voices of authority that stand behind our experiences of desire and instinct, shaping not only how we communicate them - but perhaps dictating how we feel and act in the first place.
So the project as it stands at the moment is a summary, a collage of observations, of contemporary 'authority' figures which dictate how or what women should feel as they grow. This is done physically by the performers: we see them pluck at their bodies in an invisible mirror; be transformed from nervous self-conscious wrecks into a punching army of aggression and 'self-assertion' (fascistically, utterly controlled by one leader); turn everyday situations of irritation and pressure into pop idol dance moves. This is paired with the equivalent poem or moment from Louys' shaping of Bilitis' life.
In many ways, we're playing into dangerous hands here - because rather than straight out rejecting these existing authorities and their versions of womanhood, we're trying to adopt them without getting lost or brainwashed. It's risky: but I want to push further into these shapes and 'versions' of womanhood, to find a truer and realer voice, a voice which emerges through the exhaustion of these conventions and cliches.
Because I think that if you don't address what exists, if you start as if none of these other patterns and version influence you and bombard you every day, you'll just self-consciously replicate them. You have to know the rules - or at least recognise them - before you can break them.
Tonight's the last performance of part one - the 'collage of observations' on who speaks for women - at the New Diorama Theatre. I've been writing a few blogs on the rehearsal process on the company website here (designed by Dylan Spencer-Davidson). And there'll be more. Brain is whirring constantly so over the weekend expect some knee-jerk missives (and hopefully a few more reflective ones) on where we go next. Have got lots of spinning-top thoughts and am figuring out which ones to keep whirring.
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