The little white dress manifesto

From Swaddling Bands to Funereal Shrouds wrap us in white cloth.

Wear your little white dress with pride.

This is not the LITTLE BLACK DRESS you will seduce in.

This is not the BIG WHITE DRESS you will marry in.

This is your little white dress.

This is your blank canvas.

This is the least practical garment you own.

This will show every stain, every crease, every tear.

This will mop up spilled milk and erase smudged mascara.

This will wipe away your tears and soak up your blood.

This will get splattered in paint and ink and charcoal.

This will get tangled in bicycle spokes and trees.

This will get shorter as your legs grow longer.

This will get tighter as your hips grow wider.

This will turn see through in the rain.

This will reflect the moonlight.

Never wash your little white dress for it tells your life story.

In your little white dress you are visible. Every beam of light will be drawn to it and rebound and you shall not go unnoticed. Every move you make will be subject to scrutiny.

There is no hiding.

The little white dress will stay pure as long as you choose to stay pure.

The little white dress will stay ironed as long as you choose to stay still.

The little white dress will fit as long as you choose not to change.

Show your workings, show your methods, show your seams, show your mistakes.

In a darkened room the girl in the little white dress will shine.

On a spotlit stage the girl in the little white dress is seen.

In a riot the girl in the little white dress turns her dress black with soot and red with blood and wears her opinions on her sleeve.

Your bloodshot eyes are so red next to your little white dress.

Your blushing cheeks are so pink next to your little white dress.

Your frozen fingers are so blue next to your little white dress.

Your stained teeth are so yellow next to your little white dress.

Little girls and strong women and fine ladies wear the little white dress.

Daughters and Sisters and Mothers wear the little white dress.

Wrap yourself in canvas, in curtains, in cotton wool but let it show us who you are and what you have done and where you have been.

The little white dress is a blank sheet of paper, a stretched canvas, an uncharted map, an empty frame, an unwritten book, a clean carpet, a winter garden, a freshly scrubbed face, an untested recipe, a blueprint, a therapist, a doctor, an artist, an architect, a poet, a politician, an athlete, a lawyer, a shaman, an icon.

The little white dress cannot tell a lie.

The little white dress presents itself as conclusive evidence.

The little white dress has a story to tell you.

The little white dress is here and will not leave until you have made your mark upon it.

The little white dress is a force to be reckoned with.

Stream of Consciousness

I often get asked how I go about writing text for shows. The work I make with little white dress tends to be non-narrative and fragmented, more poetry than prose, and so requires a different process to that of character development and mapping out plot-points. The majority of my writing begins as a stream of consciousness. Beforehand I may, for instance, submerge myself in a research project, play games, or simply people watch. Then I put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard and let the words flow out. Whatever I'm writing, poetry, prose or academia, I always start with quantity and then usually cut two thirds of the material afterwards, leaving only the very best material behind. Here is an example of my scribblings whilst people-watching. Maybe four or five sentences, an image or two, might eventually make their way into a show. I find it is far more useful to have great quantities of material to play with at the start of a process than an idea you hone and sharpen before ever getting anything down on paper.

Heaven is rose lemonade, sunshine, Belle and Sebastian on the soundsystem and attractive men practising their circus skills nearby. Summer is much the same as heaven. This is summer. This is heaven. If only I could get the wifi to work.

ALL THAT SHE WANTS IS ANOTHER BABAY SHES GONE TOMORROW ALL THAT SHE WANTS IS ANOTHER BABAY.

Why WOULDN’T you want your confectionary blended into mucus.

Milkshake shops are an attempt to return to infancy where our nutrition all comes in the same bland white bottle.

Perhaps milkshake shops will take over bingo halls as the last refuge of pensioners. No need to worry about the sugar rotting their teeth, they’ve none left so they may as well enjoy the rush while they still can.

Louise something. An infant dress composed of dandelion clocks. Childhood is so fragile and can be used to tell how old you are. BREATHE one BREATHE two BREATHE three BREATHE four all gone. Misspollyhadadollyandit’sheadpoppedOFF.

I NEED TO FIND A PLUG SOCKET OR ELSE I CAN NO LONGER WRITE.

I walk til I can walk no more through the back streets of a city made up of Holland and Leeds and Heptonstall and the smells of holidays. The hot hot heat drawing out a human petrichor from skin. The rain rises from our pores into the dry air as though trying to quench our thirst in the desert. I compromise with lemon-aid.  All the outside tables are taken as the crowds gather en masse for this brief mirage of summertime. When exactly did the seasons change over? The may blossom is still clinging to the branches but gone are the showers and the storms of spring. Girls roll their tops up and boys gaze longingly at the bodies of girls with their tops rolled up, torsos glistening with dewdrops and the effort of looking cool.

People in hot countries are perpetually happy to make up for the frown lines they aquire from years of squinting into the sunlight. They must fall in love more easily for they are blinded to peoples faces, seeing merely the reflection of sunlight from everyones faces.

Every street ends in a church, all of them with their doors locked to keep the sin out and the cool dry stone full of the hope of summer days. Coloured glass prevents the beauty of god's sunlight beaming in. Only penitents allowed here. Hessian shifts £3 in Primark, your ideal beach cover up for women who hate their lusts and passions. Sins of the flesh can be soothed with a liberal coating of ice cream.

Sweat plasters our hair to our head and no amount of tropical breeze batiste dry shampoo will bring life back into it. Our hair, like our heads and our hearts is languid and suffering from heatstroke. Water, give us water, and shampoo to cleanse the season away.

Babies fuss and whine, too young to appreciate the rarity of british summertime. Oversensitive eyes and skin burning with the white hot heat and ears confused by the shouts and songs of buskers and shoppers milling through the market.

Everyone speaks funny here and as the teenage boy mutters a hopeful ‘hey girl’ in my direction it is all I can do not to laugh in his face. I mutter ‘hi’ in return and hurry on, dragging my suitcase behind me, saving my laughter for the privacy of this bench. From this angle alone the river with it’s weeping willows is picturesque and pastoral in the city centre, but once you pass onto the bridge we see the office buildings built up all around. Businesses with enough money for a view, denied to the poor and those in search of truth and beauty, freedom and love. Beauty costs darling and you don’t have a ticket to view.

Enter the rat race and maybe then and only then you can have a go at it.

How can people go to work on a day like this. Bank holidays should be reserved spontaneously for days where the world is just too beautiful to be passed by. No holidays for the banks. Holidays for the beauty of the world.

Sorry everyone but the world is just to magnificent to be ignored today. Take the day off work, and sit and eat your bbqs and splash in the rivers. Chase butterflys and memories and feel the pebbles under your bare feet and put on your sundress and sunlotion and sunhat and sunglasses and let’s all go outside and smell like life shall we. Just for one perfect orange coloured day.

45 mintues either side of an interval. And intervals mean ice cream. A NATIONAL ICE CREAM DAY> NOONE WORKS except the ice cream man in his refrigerated van of dreams.

The buses arrive and depart at their allotted times A girl in a black felt hat, long floral skirt, saddle shoes and holding a polkadot handbag and large fur coat dreams of teddy boys long out of fashion but so utterly dreamy. Chubby dishwater blondes with their pockmarked skin and ¾ length jeans clutch onto bus passes and principles. No prettifying for them. Not when there are adventures to be had. She walks not in beauty like the night but in practicality like a bright but mild day. Unremarkable from the scuffed tips of her converse knock offs to the blue elastic holding her hair back in a no-nonsense ponytail, little white wormy threads escaping it’s tight clutch as they give up on a lifetimes struggle to keep that hair out of it’s distracted owners face. The curly haired boy, 16, 17 maybe, swirls his skateboard around with his foot. He is miserable, The girl with the tight tshirts, the baggy jeans and the sour apple bubble gum wasn't there to impress today and he skinned the knee of his new green shorts.

Yet another 18 year old art, psychology, English and biology stuent girl with cropped faded cherry red hair and the ubiquitous tattoo of stars and swallows on her left foot is absorbed by the string of text messages detailing the latest interview with tom hiddleston and OMG HOW FREAKING HOT IS HE IM GOING TO DIE I LOVE HIM HIS FACE HIS FACE! Her earlobes stretched just enough to confuse and irritate her parents but not so large that she has lost hope of ever getting a job as a dispensary assistant in a chemist (or maybe, like, a graphic designer, or an architect or something, as long as I don’t have to do the boring bits with perspective and angles and MATHS).

A sensible old woman walks past in her Breton top and neatly pressed pants. Feet encased by comfortable loafers from Clarks. She is laden down with carrier bags from Hobbs and John Lewis and is going to treat herself to a vanilla slice from the bakery on her way home.

The long legged schoolgirl waits inside the bus shelter. Topshop ripoff creepers on her feet one small nod to the mainstream alternative. She listens to Kaiser Chiefs and bands beginning with ‘The’ where all the boys wear skinny jeans and are phobic of hair brushes or else addicted to Brylcreem in ‘like an ironic way, yea?’.

A striped satchel and green skinny fit jumper. She is just cool enough to go by completely unnoticed.

She is perhaps a little too gangly to be comfortable in her skin at high school but god she’ll be a stunner once she hit’s college and meets new boys to whom she can be mysterious and their counties answer to Gemma Ward. 

Review: Nicki Hobday Conquers Space

Nicki Hobday conquers space is a thoroughly playful performance. The audience enters to buoyant music, everyone is buzzing, ready for the first show of that day. Nicki has already saved the day for us filling in at the last moment for Formally Silent, for whom a broken arm has prevented them making it to the Flare Weekender. From the very start the piece plays upon our preconceptions of theatre, what we look for in a theatrical experience, and what we want from our performers. A spotlight is lit, but…

Noone enters the light. Not yet. All we have is a girl standing to the side of the stage, in the shadows, in a tshirt and jeans, talking into a microphone. She talks about what could happen. About who Nicki might be. She second guesses what we want – costumes, a big set, something visual to keep us engaged. Slowly, but surely she takes the spotlight, still insistent that she is not Nicki Hobday ‘The Girl From The Title’. The Girl Who Is Not Nicki Hobday is very explicit about what Nicki Hobday wants from her audience. A relationship is being laid out for us, she knows what we want and she wants us to find her endearing, to feel sorry for her status as a solo performer.

But this isn’t just another black box studio show with a microphone and a lot of self-referential meta-theatrical chatter. Something is always slightly off. When she engages with the audience she gets their names wrong, she answers for them so we have parallel universes set up for us. One world in which Mike says yes, and another in which Dave says no. We are invited to put our hands up OR down to express an opinion. And so the space begins to be conquered. The Girl Who Is Not Nicki Hobday knows what we want but it will happen on her terms or not at all.

 Eventually she begins to give us what we want, a striking visual image is set up for us, with coats and hats on microphone stands becoming the performers (and staying very still until their cue. Not because they’re inanimate objects. They’re just professionals. Obviously.)

 However, always, there is the pervading sense that when she gives us what we want it is beneficial to her. If she gives us what we want then we will find her endearing, we will give her what she wants.

The wordiness from the beginning is cleverly balanced throughout the show as throwaway comments begin to come true, a guitar on a stand appears, there is a big costume change, everything is explained for us, and somehow, throughout the show we become aware that The Girl Who Is Not Nicki Hobday is actually, slowly becoming Nicki Hobday herself. But we aren’t left long to experience her before the space is invaded by a stranger with a gun. Nicki is dead. But of course she isn’t dead, this is theatre and she still has to achieve the title. And so space is created. And they say she conquers it. And there are planets. And everything is wonderful.

She gives us what we want and we love it. 

Cross posted on the Flare Weekender Blog

Amusements VS. Velocity Pumps: A Question of Fetishisation

The experience of watching theatre at a festival is very different to that of watching a standalone piece, as inevitably seeing so many different shows back to back means you start to connect the dots, finding links and readings that couldn’t possibly happen if you saw those shows individually.

Friday night at the Flare Weekender had two shows, which on their own I would have found interesting, arresting even, but which in contrast to each other had a very intense effect on me.

Amusements by Sleepwalk Collective is a darkly voyeuristic show, manipulating your senses through a pair of headphones, letting the performer Iara Solano whisper in your ear as she tugs at your memories, playing with your consent and gazing at you with tears in her eyes.

Velocity Pumps by Beerman, Shvestarova, Theisen consists of three young women isolating parts of their body and contorting them into bodybuilding or balletic poses designed to strain the muscles til we see the bulge, the girls breath racing, their veins popping.

Both of these shows seemed focussed around fragmenting the female body, albeit to different intents and purposes.

 Iara invited us to watch her disappear, her lips, her legs, her blood, her skin. Her few movements draw our attention to the areas of her body most sensitive to touch. The voice of a strange unseen man in our ears asking us if he can touch himself while he watches the girl makes us feel trapped, horribly, in a dark and twisted peep show. We do not know if the girl consents, we just know that she is removing her knickers for him. She is broken down into components to be sexualised, fetishised, worshipped and adored. She is broken down into these parts until she disappears from view, leaving only a pair of stilettos to mark where the woman once was.

Conversely Velocity Pumps showed us the parts of the body women are so often expected to hide, to neglect. We saw women with muscles, with sweat, with blood pumping through their veins not to please men but to increase and show off their strength and power. We focus on calves and lats, biceps and abs, and revel in seeing someone work so hard. But the smiles are forced, the breathing laboured, the cheeks flushed. For us to appreciate the strength of these women they must put on a show for us. They must turn this strength to dancing. We must be entertained, not intimidated. The world of the bodybuilder is one steeped in vanity and well-worn poses, a world that feels faintly ridiculous. This is strength with no place to go, power with nothing to be powerful over. Once again this is fetishisation of the body, though a fetishisation of the body’s capability to perform, not simply to… well, to make new bodies.

These two shows on their own would have made me think, I may have ‘enjoyed’ them more individually, but in tandem they have made me seriously question the use of the female body in performance and the place and purpose of such fetishisation. Highly thought provoking work, and well recommended.

(cross posted on the Flare Weekender Blog.)

Tuesday 22nd: Walking Workshop

I've come down to Norwich for a few days because of a very exciting opportunity. Robert Wilson's Piece Walking is being transferred to Norfolk for the Norfolk and Norwich Festival, and they need people to be 'Angels', so there was an open audition/workshop for people to come along to to see if they were interested/right for it/capable etc. So I got myself on an overnight coach after Monday's rehearsals to go to it!

Because Robert Wilson.
Obviously.
*freaks out*

I was very hot and sweaty before we even get to the venue, british summer has ARRIVED and I was tired and buzzy after taking in a whole new city and wandering around in the sunlight for hours dragging my suitcase behind me.

We arrived at Open and find ourselves utterly enclosed in an airless, windowless black space (space is at a premium during the N and N festival ), the absolute opposite to the project we are auditioning for, which will take place outdoors along the through the Norfolk countryside and along the coastline. Boukje (one of the artists who worked with Wilson to create it) talked to us about what the project was, and what they needed from the participants. The idea is that we'll stay in a hostel near the project for three weeks, working in shifts on the project for part of the day and then using the rest of the time to collaborate with each other, arrange lectures and skill-shares and so on.
We all introduced ourselves. Most of the other people there had a background in visual and fine arts rather than performance, but everyone seemed to do a lot of work with or inspired by the landscape.
I never thought much about it but a great deal of my work has been inspired by it in some way. Joe and Petunia was inspired by the ocean, and Little White Dresses current project is inspired by the night sky. It would be amazing to explore such a different landscape to mine in the pennines. To be somewhere so flat and open...

The workshop was all about spatial awareness and ways of leading and guiding.
A lot of the games and exercises we did were similar to those I've been doing with Red Ladder but  where with Red Ladder we've worked on building energy, stamina, and focus, here everything was on learning to fully experience what we was happening to us.

We began with simple games.

• Say your name. Look to your right, visualise yourself in the space. Give the space your name. Step into the space, claim it, and say your name again.
• Make eye contact with someone across the circle, say their name and move to inhabit their space. They have to say someones name and continue before you get to them. Then repeat game just with eye contact.

We then started walking around the space, placing hands on the base of peoples backs to energise their walk. Once we found our own 'energised walk' we had to link up with other people, joining in their walk and then returning to our own. We then started an exercise we have done with Red ladder, saying your name, starting to fall and everyone gathering to catch you and put you back on your feet, building up to them laying you right down, and eventually picking you up and carrying you around. The feeling was very different with a group of strangers in an 'audition' situation. Everyone seemed very tentative and not ready to trust everyone yet, whereas with Red Ladder the problems came when too many people fell at once!

We had to learn to trust each other pretty quickly though as the nest exercises all involved someone having their eyes closed!

We built from letting one person wander around the circle with closed eyes and us keeping them safe up to several wanderers who we had to keep safe from each other. We experimented in the ways we guided them, using voice or touch, being gentle or forceful. As staid as saying left, right, left, to the playfulness of waltzing around.

We then split into pairs, and took that work, using it to guide one another on a journey through the room, choosing a small number of images for them to see. (Something about having your attention focused on one small object after a long time blind makes that object far more precious and memorable. I looked at an old shoe and a poster, my partner at a wheel and an apple core.)

We continued the blindfolded work with some more playful activities, such as leading them blindfolded through two rows of people enacting, through touch and sound, a place (we had a river, a rainforest, a factory and a playground), with the blindfolded then guessing where they were.

The next half of the workshop was directed at building our spatial awareness and exploring the possibilities within it.

We started this with some physical exercises.

1.   Standing with feet parallel and legs unlocked feeling gravity work on us, and letting it ground us.

2.   Feeling bubbling energy rise through our bodies pulling us upwards, whilst still being grounded, stretching us vertically as far as possible.

3.   Feeling a magnetic force pulling us first to the left and then the right, stretching us horizontally.

4.   Feeling waves pulling at us, drawing us forward and backward.

5.   Letting energy push our arms up (making sure to let it happen, rather than forcing it to happen, as though helium balloons were underneath our arms).

6.   Gathering that energy from our arms and pulling it down into our bodies (similar to a sun salutation in yoga).

7.    Shaking all that energy out of our bodies in all directions.

8.   Twisting and spinning our arms around us, letting a pendulum force take hold of our bodies so the movement happens with no energy expended on our part.

9.   Bringing this pendulum motion together with another person, standing back to back and spinning around to clap hands together.

Next we built on this back-to-back relationship, walking around the space backwards, bumping into people (backwards) and feeling them through your back, rubbing against each other like bears scratching on a tree! Eventually we found partners and spent a long time back to back with them, figuring out how to move together, really trusting each other to take our weight. We were then told to very slowly break away from each other, still feeling that connection between us as we moved further and further away. Eventually we turned to face each other, making eye contact and moved, slowly (always slowly) together again., feeling with each step how the experience felt, moving as close as could be until we were standing nose to nose, still making eye contact. We stayed their for a long time, experiencing that closeness to a stranger, taking time to really notice them, notice their presence, and how it felt to be that close to a person. Finally we were told to break away once more, to maintain eye contact but to walk away from each other, feeling that presence shift again. It’s a very intense sensation, holding eye contact with someone for so long, and we spent a long time discussing how little eye contact is made, how it’s often seen as a threat, or as an immensely emotionally sensation, and  (edit: writing this after I got my email telling me I’ve been selected! ARGH!) I’m looking forward to working more on this project, and seeing where this work leads us!

Monday 21st: Promised Land Rehearsal

This was another rehearsal with just the sweatshop people. We played Chaos again, which felt easier this time. We are becoming more attuned to each other as a group.
We also did some vocal work, singing various phrases up and down the scale (cheese and biscuits, weetabix for breakfast, vinyl linoleum, various football players names, etc...) and then singing that 'I like the flowers, I like the daffodils' song and 'Blue Moon' in a round, walking around the space.

Unlike last time we were working on the riot scene which does actually contain the entire company, the idea being that's it's easier to work intensively with a small group, who can then help lead the scene next time making it easier for the rest of the company to pick up. It also helped us become more confident with the scene as every single person needs to be aware of cues and able to lead group moments rather than being reliant on one or two strong voices.

Rod was concerned that the scene wasn't threatening enough, and I have to agree it felt long and dull, just waiting for the next cue to start shouting abuse. This was again about finding ways to keep the stage 'alive'. We split into pairs and threes, and had to find each other across the space, muttering a constant, quiet, tirade of hate - about whatever we wanted (who needs a therapist when you can vent as much as you like in rehearsal!)- and then move into the mob, continuing this level of muttering throughout, giving us a sound to build on and fall back to when necessary, just adding in words from the main speeches being given to keep them sounding relevant. There is enough vitriol in the words written without needing to shout and scream everything, so bringing the whole scene down to a much quieter level actually made it far more insidious and creepy, and oddly helped keep the energy up.

One of the most difficult challenges with this scene is that the mob has to change between the 'local' people, looking for a fight, determined to reclaim 'their' city and kick the Jews out, and the Jewish immigrants in the sweatshop, hearing the mobs gather outside. We worked on Meyer and Rosa taking the power and using their speeches to rouse the immigrant mob up so we have two distinct mobs, both looking for a fight, but one negative - trying to get rid of people, and one positive- determined to stand up for themselves.

This scene has now become more interesting to be a part of, understanding the complexities of the situation and allowing for subtlety in what could easily just be a scene of 'LISTEN TO ME SHOUT AT YOU'. We talked a bit about how hard intervals make shows as you have to work from scratch to gain the audiences attention again, and I think these changes might just make that effort easier for us.

Sunday 20th May 2012: Promised Land Rehearsal - A Study in Muscle Memory

Sunday’s rehearsal proved to be, above all else, a lesson in muscle memory! 

We started with a warm-up lead by the wonderful (and sadistic) Pauline (just kidding, I love you, please don’t make me do planks again!). We started with yoga which I REALLY need to start doing on a regular basis as it always makes me feel fantastic. * Note To Self: dig out my yoga mat from Nancy’s yoga sessions at uni and start reliving those sun salutations. Amazing American accent optional. *

When we were all stretched out, and slightly dizzy from so much deep breathing, she set about teaching us a dance full of outstretched heels and folk-ness.

For the first time ever I was grateful for the weird little ‘modules’ they always added onto my ballet exams, character dancing, Russian dancing, Polish dancing. It turns out all of that training was going to be useful! Two of the songs in this show, both the Yiddish-gospel style songs, will have dancing in, and having the moves already hidden away in my muscle memory has made learning them a hell of a lot easier. A lot of the cast members (painfully accurate to the stereotype, almost all of the men) were complaining about being unable to multi-task, trying to combine the percussive rhythm we are beating out, the song we are singing, and the dance we are… well… dancing. Personally I find it really helps me to both remember lines and lyrics, and to get into character, to combine them with rhythms or movements. At college I used to make songs out of lists of things I needed to remember as a revision technique, and can still remember a lot of them now so it obviously worked! 

I remember watching an excellent documentary about dyslexia with Kara Tointon (guilty pleasure alert: I LOVED her in Strictly Come Dancing), and they helped her to learn her lines by associating each line with a movement so that they became linked with her muscle memory, and thereby surpassing the section of her brain affected by her dyslexia making it vastly quicker for her to memorise dialogue. I’m not dyslexic but I HAVE been dancing and playing music from a very young age so I guess that’s had an impact on the way I work! Humans are funny things, aren’t they?

I always like to get off script as early as I can, I remember lines much better once I’m actually IN the action rather than reading it and imagining it. One of my favourite ways of working was when I did Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (as Veruca Salt. BEST. ROLE. EVER.), and we just had the script printed out large and stuck to the wall so none of us had to hold a script and got into the habit of performing out to the audience. A good thing too as that particular interpretation was just monologue after monologue… Most people are starting to get off the book now and the show is feeling vastly smoother for it. There are a lot of big speeches in this show too, but now they are being performed rather than just read, everyone is being a lot more playful and experimental and everything is getting a lot more interesting! I’m really starting to understand and, if not exactly enjoy (racism and football hooliganism are never going to be my cup of tea) then at least inhabit the world we are creating.

We managed our first full run of the show today (though it really was a stagger-through as we were missing Paul who is playing Nathan, the protagonist of the show) and there is still a lot of work to be done but I am really excited with where it is going. I actually felt really emotional watching some of the scenes today, I think we’re on to a winner.

P.S. This blog was written from a coffee shop on a macbook on the way to an audition and I have never felt more pretentious in my life. I kind of love it. I R HIPSTER. (and now I just want to watch that thing with I R BABOON. What was it? Some kind of wonderful cartoon…)