frankiebleedsout-blog
Speak Up! Bleed Out!
14 posts
Frankie-Rose Taylor I am an MA Contemporary Performance student at the University of Kent and a political activist, currently devising for my Ensemble Work module.
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frankiebleedsout-blog · 8 years ago
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Inspiration
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frankiebleedsout-blog · 8 years ago
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Week 7: Intertextuality
When showing our work to Nikki in a supervised rehearsal, she noticed that some elements were very reminiscent of other female performance artists. Mimi and I loved the idea of placing our production in it’s performative context, as well as paying homage to a few of the amazing artists that have paved the way and inspired us to be creating work today. We decided to try and include as many references to other artists as possible, as well as a list of them in our programme so that any audience members who were knowledgeable in that area could try and spot them. Here is a list of the artists we referenced:
Annie Sprinkle: I describe my scene as a Public Clitoral Announcement in reference to her work Public Cervix Announcement. This is again seen when we discuss the science of female arousal; Mimi is laying in a similar position to a cervical screening and I “examine” her with a torch.
Bobby Baker: Food is used throughout the production to “build” and represent various parts of the vagina and our experiences having one. Bobby Baker often uses food to represent female experience, causing one of our tutors to refer to us as “like a dirty Bobby Baker”.
Bryony Kimmings: Reference is made to Bryony’s piece Sex Idiot where she collected pubic hair from audience members and sellotaped them together to wear as a moustache. We ask an audience member to wear a fake moustache that Mimi pulls out of her pants.
Carolee Schneemann: During our timeline sequence, Mimi removes the scroll of the timeline as if from my vagina, referencing Schneemann’s infamous piece Interior Scroll.
Casey Jenkins: When describing the science of female arousal, I pull red wool out of what appears to be Mimi’s vagina to link her to the various areas in our vagina maps, and in homage to Casting Off My Womb, where Jenkins knits with wool stored in her vaginal tunnel.
Catherine Elwes: The “period” of our production, where we wore white boxer shorts and squirted around ketchup as if menstrual blood bares a similar aesthetic to Catherin Elwes works Menstruation 1 and Menstruation 2.
Deborah de Robertis: Again in the “period” section of the performance, the use of ketchup is reminiscent of Deborah de Robertis’ controversial piece I Want You To Lick My Ketchup.
Deidre Heddon: Although not specific to a certain section, both Mimi and I found Heddon’s book Autobiography and Performance very inspiring overall in the creation of our personas and use of real life experiences on stage, and how that in turn gives voice to our oppression's.
Eve Ensler (The Vagina Monologues): Reference was constantly made to Ensler’s ground-breaking play when we discussed our performance plans with other people. Mimi and I wanted to make sure some respect was shown to the production and its place in the vagina-based theatre cannon. We decided to take one of the common motifs of any re-imagining of Ensler’s text, collecting money for local domestic abuse charities and ask our audiences to make a donation at the end of the performance.
Lousie Mothersole and Rebecca Biscuit (Sh!t Theatre): Sh!t Theatre have been a massive influence on me generally as a performer in terms of structure, DIY style and aesthetic as well as embracing the “shit” in live performance. Particular reference is paid to them in this production when we discuss other characters in our stories by fake names, stating “not their real name but almost”, which is a theme in their production Letters to Windsor House.
Luce Ingaray and Naomi Wolf: Luce Ingray’s book The Sex Which Is Not One and Naomi Wolf’s Vagina: A New Biography are both referred to in the more academic sections of the production.
Joan Jonas: Jonas is a pioneer of the use of video in performance art and in turn live video played a large part in our production, as a distancing technique as well as to create a sense of voyeurism.
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frankiebleedsout-blog · 8 years ago
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Inspiration: Bobby Baker
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frankiebleedsout-blog · 8 years ago
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Week 6: Food Glorious Food!
Mimi and I really liked our section where we built our vagina’s out of objects in our bags and wanted to create a similar scene but using a new material. We settled on using sweets as we found it a good way to link between stories from our childhood’s and the more adult material of the show, as well as providing a lot of opportunities as a tool, such as eating and puppetry. We were greatly inspired by Bobby Baker and her relationship with food in order to demonstrate her female experience. Here is a video of us trying this for the first time:
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Bibliography:
Aston, E. and Harris, G. (2008) Performance Practice and Process: Contemporary [Women] Practitioners. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 
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frankiebleedsout-blog · 8 years ago
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Inspiration: You Should See The Other Guy
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I was greatly inspired by a performance called Land of the Three Towers by theatre company You Should See The Other Guy. This verbatim, contemporary production tells the story of the political occupation of the Carpenters Estate by campaign group Focus E15 and was performed by an all female cast including young mothers, people who have experienced homelessness and housing activists from Focus E15. As a social housing campaigner, including with the Focus E15 Mothers, I loved this production but was particularly inspired by the performative techniques used to make it engaging as well as political. The action moved between current, autobiographical stories from members of the cast discussing their own struggles with finding adequate housing in London and reenacting moments from the occupation, employing song and “acting in quotation marks”. The clear caricatures that were created to represent various players in the story were amusing and I loved the juxtaposition with the more serious, personal anecdotes. For my production, I am interested in how Mimi and I can flit between these two styles ourselves and how we can tell stories in a fun, playful and more traditionally theatrical way for comic effective, as well as just speaking them to our audience. 
Bibliography:
You Should See The Other Guy (2016) Land of the Three Towers. Camden People’s Theatre, London.
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frankiebleedsout-blog · 8 years ago
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Week 5: Getting Scripty
Mimi and I decided the best way to move our process on this week would be to each go away and prepare a scripted scene about an individual element of our vagina. I was very interested in the idea of orgasm and how it is something that is considered a given for men but rarely discussed in women. Because of this, it is not uncommon for women such as myself to struggle with it. I realised this is quite unusual for someone who is as open about sex as I am so wanted to use my scene to try and work out where my trouble stems from. I put it down to the mystery surrounding female orgasm in general and additionally the pressure to be able to in order to validate your partner.
In the introduction to her plays 2.5 Minute Ride and 101 Humiliating Stories, Lisa Kron writes that one of the two rules of autobiographical work is that ‘the goal […] should not be to tell stories about yourself but, instead, to use the details of your own life to illuminate or explore something more universal’ (2001, p. xi). So I decided to play my scene as a story about my own struggle and resulting first orgasm, told in a very personal way but then going on to highlight it as something which stems from a problem with society as a whole not discussing female sexuality. One of my personal favourite methods of storytelling is through poetry. I am hugely inspired by performance poets such as Maddie Godfrey and how the use of rhythm and the sound of words can create passion and anger, not just solely relying on your personal performance. This was an idea I particularly took on board in this poem, which forms the main core of my scene, ‘We need to talk about cunts more’:
I also experimented with the idea of interspersing snippets from some of my favourite songs which illustrated moments in my story through-out the script. I thought this added an additional comedic element, sporadically breaking into song as well as using another non-traditional storytelling method and representing my persona. However, in rehearsal we released that as they were not songs that were particularly popular in mainstream culture, they did not read well so decided to cut them.
Although I was pleased with my final script, I still didn’t feel that it completely got across the point I wanted to make which I found quite hard to articulate. Mimi suggested that I embrace this and discuss it with the audience. I really loved the idea of not hiding the flaws in our performance and being very open with our audience and with ourselves.
 Bibliography
Kron, L. (2001) 2.5 Minute Ride and 101 Humiliating Stories. New York: Theatre Communications Group.
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frankiebleedsout-blog · 8 years ago
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Inspiration: Maddie Godfrey
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frankiebleedsout-blog · 8 years ago
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Inspiration: Sh!t Theatre
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Sh!t Theatre, and their production Letters to Windsor House are a great example of how to use persona, comedy and DIY aesthetics to successfully create autobiographical, political leaning performance.
From when the audience are taking their seats, we already get a glimpse into the personas of Louise and Rebecca, sitting on stage, drinking wine and singing along to ‘Alone’ by Heart, each dancing in a way very representative of their personalities. The song, and music in general is a recurring theme throughout the production, denoting changes to different scenes, recurring sections or moods. This varies from popular songs referenced in the production, to original music they have written to reworkings of classics to create a hilarious collage of different styles of performance with slippage and a clear theme.
I love their minimal set, composing of hand made props, a sofa and cardboard boxes, with which, plus technical elements, they are able to create any of the necessary scenes. The projector in particular is a very large element of the production, being utilised constantly to show self-shot videos, photos and screen shots. I am a big fan of this DIY aesthetic and feel that it brings a pleasing audience connection, rather than separation that can be cause by overly theatrical and expensive sets, placing the production and audience very much in a shared space. 
Bibliography:
Sh!t Theatre (2017) Letters to Windsor House. Soho Theatre, London. 
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frankiebleedsout-blog · 8 years ago
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Week Three: Cunts in Context
Mimi and I decided to think about some of the wider issues affecting women in rehearsals this week, as we felt it was important to put our discussion in to the context of feminism as a whole, not just our personally stories, especially in light of our own privilege. I personally felt it was important to do more research into intersectional feminism as I am very aware of the fact that we are two white, cis, straight, educated women. I decided to engage more with the renowned Facebook feminist forum Just a Little Idea, of which I am an original member. Founded by my best friend and starting out with just our social circle, it has now grown to nearly 3000 members and I find it is hot bed of current and informative discussion on a variety of issues. After reading a few comment threads and articles, particularly in reference to “white feminism” and how exclusionary the movement can be, I feel I have a much better understanding of how to be an ally to my sisters with less privilege and am determined to make our production as successful as possible in that respect.
We also thought about some recent stories from the media concerning feminist issues and made a list of a few we thought would be particularly interesting to explore. During the discussion we made a discovery, that a few of the things we were mentioning; bad policies that were supposedly stopped by a social campaign (for example the tampon tax and removing women from the syllabus on some GCSE and A Level subjects) have just disappeared. It’s as if the battle was won so everyone stopped campaigning but everything just carried on as normal and was forgotten about. The stories, and whether these issues had actually been resolved, was never reported on in the press again. We thought this was a really interesting angle, the idea of forgotten stories and even as an extension of that, all the women who have been forgotten throughout history. We decided to pick one story, the tampon tax and start devising.
We know from our original discussions as well as some of the discoveries we have made during improvisations that we really like the idea of caricature, and that this is not an uncommon medium in political performance. For example in Agit Prop Theatre in Soviet Russia “figures were stereotyped and instantly recognisable; the capitalist with the top hat, the general with colossal epaulettes and sword. These pieces functioned well enough when performed to sympathetic audiences, helping reinforce their socialist convictions” (Patterson, 2003, p.14). We came up with the idea of using a stereotypical news host to present three news bulletins at different points in the life of the story, the final one being silence. Mimi took on this role while I used symbolic props to play various interviewees, representing different opinions and characters from the story, in an over-the-top, stylised way. We felt this was a humorous, yet still informative way to create an overview, which is well cut down when we realise that no one actually knows if the tampon tax was ever removed and what is happening with it now.
However, it has come to our attention that, although we wanted our performance to reference its current social and political context, bringing in other stories, this could be potentially problematic. Firstly, there is such a plethora of issues, ranging from injustices to irritations, it would be impossible to do them all justice, and would it actually be less effective to discuss a large selection but badly, or not at all. Secondly, it rather moves away from our theme. Although, we did originally imagine the production not only being about our vaginas on a personal level but also how by having them, and being female, we negotiate the world differently to men and face a variety of differing issues; we can also understand that this somewhat muddies the water of what we are trying to do. We think for next week we will return to our original stimulus and then maybe see if there is room for other stories at a later date.
Bibliography:
Patterson, M. (2003) Strategies of Political Theatre: Post-War British Playwrights. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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frankiebleedsout-blog · 8 years ago
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Inspiration: Hollie McNish
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frankiebleedsout-blog · 8 years ago
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Week Two: Who Am I?
This week, Mimi and I wanted to focus on the idea of persona. We knew we wanted our performance personas to also say something about our treatment as women, and that we would have to be selective about what elements of ourselves we decided to bring in to them if we were going to be able to perform them effectively and construct a clear character. We thought it would be interesting to therefore use the way that men view us and the main characteristics that they think we have, in attempt to illustrate that we are viewed differently because of our gender. Auslander describes how persona’s originate as ‘the performer’s self-presentation, and are refined through confrontations with texts and the act of performing’ (1997, p.41) in which case we agreed it was definitely something worth trying to flip this on its head and instead use how we are read as people rather than what we try and project. So we asked some of the boys on our course to tell us how they would have described us when they first met us, as well as thinking back to the types of comments we have received from men we have been close to. The comments I received were mostly steamed from my evident political beliefs (confrontational, sure of myself) or from my sense of dress (edgy, confident, “kooky”), whereas Mimi’s were often centered around her appearance more objectively, being pretty, blonde and wearing lots of makeup. In rehearsals we brainstormed all these things and tried to pick out the ones that were most complimentary of each other in terms of creating a character.
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We came up with the idea of constructing each other in front of an audience. We already knew we wanted symbolic costume pieces to be a running theme throughout the performance, so we chose particularly items that we think illustrated the elements we wanted to highlight in each other’s character and dressed one another, describing in a small piece of text what each article of clothing was representing:
This is Mimi. [Rose gold choker]. She’s a 22 year old glamour puss from Reading [High heel boots]. She comes across all posh totty, but underneath it all she’s pretty outrageous [Fur coat]. Well spoken, blonde and beautiful [Lipstick], she’s a dominant woman who always takes charge.
This is Frankie [Necklace with my name on]. She’s a 24 year old political activist from East London [Doc Martin boots]. She’s a feisty femme-fatale who you probably wouldn’t want to mess with [political pin badge]. She’s quirky, sexy and fun and always up for a debate [silver trousers].
It occurred to us that these “characters” that steamed from the way men view us and personas they construct for us related to some common movie tropes. This would make sense, as in 2017 media is hugely influential in the way we view the world around us. For example, I found I was often viewed, because of my less conventional dress sense and opinions, in the trope of “manic pixie dream girl”.
“Let's say you're a soulful, brooding male hero, living a sheltered, emotionless existence. If only someone could come along and open your heart to the great, wondrous adventure of life... Have no fear, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is here to give new meaning to the male hero's life! She's stunningly attractive, high on life, full of wacky quirks and idiosyncrasies (generally including childlike playfulness and a tendency towards petty crime), often with a touch of wild hair dye. She's inexplicably obsessed with our stuffed-shirt hero, on whom she will focus her kuh-razy antics until he learns to live freely and love madly.”  (TV Tropes, n.d.)
We wanted to clearly build up these identities throughout the performance with the hope of tearing them down, or highlighting their ridiculousness towards the end of the production. Hedden writes that “devising autobiographical performances then, provides a means for the critical analysis and questioning of our immediate social environment and their impact on every day practices” (2008, p.17) so as a side line to our vagina based discussion, Mimi and I thought it could be interesting to also challenge the environment in which they exist in and the social constructs we face because we have them (not that all women have vaginas, but you know what I mean!).
 Bibliography:
Auslander, P. (1997) From Acting to Performance. London: Routledge.
Heddon, D. (2008) Autobiography and Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
TV Tropes (n.d.) Manic Pixie Dream Girl [Online]. Available from: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ManicPixieDreamGirl. [Accessed 7 February 2017]
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frankiebleedsout-blog · 8 years ago
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Inspiration: Bryony Kimmings
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frankiebleedsout-blog · 8 years ago
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Week One: How do you start to make a performance about vaginas?
...Well, we felt it was only fitting to get to know each other’s a bit better, and as a result remember more  about our own. If this performance was going to culminate in being the story of each of our vaginas, we needed to think more about the stories that they could tell. We therefore decided to create timelines, stretching from our conception to the present day and document all of the things that we felt were formative or interesting, some positive and some negative.
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However, once we had this source of stimulus, we weren’t sure what do with it. We decided that we needed to normalise and make light of these experiences and not be too precious about them. So we devised a game. We wrote out on folded bits of paper and put in a pile a list of the timeline events, a list of props and a list of styles of performance and each took it in turns to pick one from each pile and improvise short scenes. Although quite a simple and funny game, maybe more associated with a school drama class, it allowed us to use humour to make numerous interesting discoveries, and possible ideas for performance.  We found that under the pressure of on the spot improvisation and in light of some of the different performance styles we were picking (including Shakespearian and Melodrama), we often fell into gender stereotypes and clichés, utilising the characters of the “fair maiden” and the “gentleman” to re-enact stories that would definitely not fit those two tropes. We also discovered the idea of using fictional or pop culture figures as representations of real people in our lives. We really liked these two ideas, especially as we are very interested in the personas and roles men create for us as women and the characteristics they impose on us that have no correlation to our actual personalities. Additionally, it adds another layer of humour and normalisation. Similarly, we enjoyed the occasions were one of us ended up personifying or physically representing an element of female experience, and felt that was a really useful technique in terms of storytelling.
In the knowledge that we wanted to have two minutes of material ready to show for the following week, we decided to focus on how we could also turn our stories into a very small section of work. We had the idea of creating a "History of our vaginas in two minutes" skit, using the timeline as a tool to run through our experiences under timed conditions. I feel that this was a useful exercise in realising that our material could be used as both the foundation for our whole piece, but also for a tiny element of it, and we could enhance or contract it as we please. In performing it, we also started to note the way we were already behaving together on stage, the way we interact and the persons we use. As this is going to form a very big part of our performance, we decided to spend next week focusing more on how to build and create a persona for each of us and how we can use these characters to also say something about the treatment we face as women.
https://bleedoutheatre.tumblr.com/post/156848138148/presenting-our-vagina-timelines
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frankiebleedsout-blog · 8 years ago
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New Year. New Show.
Welcome to my blog, where I will be documenting my process and performance for my Ensemble Work module. The piece of theatre I hope to create this term is something I have been thinking about for a while. The initial discussions went a bit like this:
ME: Mimi, do you want to work together next term?
MIMI: Oh my God, I’d been wanting to ask you the same thing!
ME: Do you want to make a play about our vaginas?
MIMI: Yeah, sure!
And so our performance was born. Since I began my postgraduate study and first got to grips with “contemporary performance”, I was drawn to the prevalence of autobiography, persona and the idea of “not acting”. I have been thinking about ways that I could use this technique, to be myself and explore feminist issues on stage with as little self-indulgence as possible. It occurred to me that, by using the vehicle of a story about my vagina, I could discuss all the issue of discrimination that affect me as a woman, but in a fun, tongue-in-cheek kind of way. We decided to name our company ‘Bleed Out’ and wrote the following statement:
BLEED OUT are pissed off. In a world still controlled by patriarchal standards, beauty ideals, constant objectification, period pain and shitty men, we want to speak up about the pressures we face as millennial, cis women. With an interest in autobiographical performance, Brecht, women’s bodies on stage and the work of artists such as Bryony Kimmings and Bobby Baker, we want to make cutting edge performance with the rude bits still definitely left in! Using our own personal stories and experiences, we hope to discuss serious issues in a light-hearted way through the use of persona, DIY aesthetics and humour. We feel it is important to not alienate our audience by making our work to preachy or female-centric. Instead, we endeavour to create work that is objectively heart-warming, funny and enjoyable, whilst subtly taking a stand against the plethora of issues still affecting women in the UK today.
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