Tuesday, May 08, 2007

 

Dangerous Curves


Today we performed a piece directed by Elizabeth, for her director's class, 'Dangerous Curves'. It's the performance for which I'd written the 'Never 100%' but I ended up using something very different because the theme evolved to female stereotypes. It was a lot of fun working on it, with the people I worked on it with, and the performance really nice for me to be in but it was just one little 10 minutes performance and I sort of wished we could have done more so I need to post something about it to lengthen it a bit... So here we are, all dressed in different stereotypes: Elizabeth is the Lolita, I'm the housewife, Meaghan is the slut/whore and Tonya is the sportsy college girl. That picture is actually toward the end when we're about to close up. We each wrote a little piece about how we perceive stereotypes and how they apply to us, so here's a picture of each of our pieces.

Elizabeth's piece went first, and was inspired by the dress she wore and the reactions she got from men when she was wearing it. It was about needing time to fin the power to be who she is and wear what she wants, and be free in her choices. We backed her up by taking baby poses and speaking out some of the lines with her in a strong voice for contrast.
This is actually one of the clearest pics, I like it a lot. They were tough to take (the pics) because we couldn't use the flash and the light wasn't very helpful...

Then we had my piece, about how I'm perceived in different countries as a woman, and what people accept, reject or expect of me according to what they know or think I am. The girls were being all gossipy behind me, accusing me of things and were the voices of what people think in different cultures.


Next was Meaghan, addressing issues of boxes and how people always try and categorize her and ask her 'what' she is, black, white, other... and finding her own identity within/despite these boxes she has to tick in forms. We circled around her and asked her "what are you?" several times.


Last but not least, Tonya's piece was about how she has a hard time finding a community which will accept her without issues of domination, how going to black men doesn't work because they're domineering as men, how in women's group she faces superiority complexes and in black women's group there is division as well according to the shades of skin... We backed her by clapping with more and more intensity as the performed poem evolved, underlying its rhythm and hopefully adding intensity to it. I think that was my favourite part of the piece because it's a strong piece and I feel like our backing her up with claps worked well, as well as the visuals or our poses.
Voilà.
Strangely enough I grew very attached to this piece even though we only rehearsed it three times... It's probably because it was ensemble work, our own creation, and with people I really enjoyed working with. You might recognise Meaghan and Elizabeth, as I worked with them on three other projects this year, we're a team :D
So thanks Elizabeth for the opportunity to work in this piece!!

# posted by V @ 2:34 AM
Comments:
On the first picture you make me think of something... I can't decide if it's the Beatles or the Goonies...
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 2:42 PM
 
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