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.