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.)