All talk and no TV party

I've been researching chat shows in preparation for upcoming episodes of The O Show and I've come across some interesting ideas ...

The mainstream TV talk show host has been described as an anchor and agent of meaning, someone whose power resides in their ‘real life’ character riding the line between expert and audience-member. What if I break down that barrier even further – opening it up to forms of participation not possible on TV due to censorship and need for ratings? Maybe instead of the commercial chat show format, I should do something a bit more like Glen O'Brien's TV Party?

The O Show - PR blurb

In-Progress description of The O Show for marketing purposes:

Do you want to find out about the lives of artists? Do you need to know how they balance the challenges of making art, paying the bills and finding love? The O Show was made for you! Out with the Oprah, in with the new! Professional artist and self-taught therapist Oriana Fox hosts the kind of chat show you’ve always wanted to see. The O Show provides fresh inspiration and straight talk from the mouths of artists and performers. Oriana, her guests and staff psychologists (Oriana’s Mom and Dad) provide the tools you need to make a change – if not in the world – then at least in your little corner of it. It’s a show that will raise your energy, lower your blood pressure and occasionally make you laugh—in short, a whole 45 minutes to an hour of pure possibility.

Artists have a lot to deal with – whether it’s their larger-than-life passion, psychological neuroses or the challenges inherent in the bohemian lifestyle – many of them find creativity to be the only respite. If Oriana’s guests can find complacency, or at least enjoy themselves in the process of striving towards it, so can you!

Creative practitioners will share their work, their life stories and their respective coping mechanisms for dealing with life’s obstacles. As life coach Barbara DeAngelis once said: “We teach what we need to learn.” For those viewers whose cup of joy runneth over, many of the techniques illuminated by these professionals can be employed towards achieving ever increasing happiness, self-actualisation and creative productivity. At the very least, The O Show provides an opportunity to debate whether or not happiness should be anyone’s ultimate goal. Whatever Oriana’s findings turn out to be, you can be a part of it! Join The O Show community and make a commitment to personal and political transformation!

All Man, All Woman and Half Bear


Oriana interviewing Mouse on episode 2 of The O Show
14 July 2011, Elevator Gallery, Hackney Wick, London

Mouse: Well, actually I consider myself to be more of a man than any man I know. When I’ve got my strap-on, you’re finished. I am all man and all woman and half bear.


Mouse demonstrates her warm-up routine for Oriana and 2nd guest Krystin Lovelace.

Mouse Training


These are just a couple of stills from last Thursday's O Show with special guest Mouse. The episode will be posted online next week. Today I'm busy editing down the transcribed interview for a special edition of Dance Theatre Journal edited by Owen Parry and Joao Florencio on the theme of Trashing Performance. Just to give you a sneak peak, here's is what Mouse had to say about her academic training ...

"It’s hard to imagine that after A-levels and Drama school all I really needed to do was stick a funnel in my arse and squirt water out of it. Why go to drama school really?"

The O Show - 14 July 2011 - featuring Mouse


The O Show
is hosted by the professional artist and self-taught therapist Oriana Fox and features interviews with artists and performers alongside how-to advice and makeovers. Guests on the next show are provocative club performer Mouse and lovelorn video artist Kristen Lovelace. Mouse is famous for her explicit live acts in which she demonstrates
the squirt-power of her muscle-lined orifices, the vagina and anus. Were going to get deep inside Mouse and find out what makes her tick. She will also perform her latest double act for the finale of the show. Second guest, Kristen Lovelace recently broke up with her fiance - she had a plan and now she  s at a loose end. Oriana will get her back on her feet so she can use this experience as fodder for yet more video art. Tune into The O Show and find out what you need to know about life, love and kegel exercises.

(This episode will be filmed for later broadcasting online. It will also be transcribed and published in a forthcoming issue of Dance Theatre Journal focusing on the theme of Trashing Performance edited by Owen Parry and Joao Florencio.) 

Thursday 14 July 2011, 7.30-9pm @ Elevator Gallery

5th Floor, 9 Queen's Yard, White Post Lane, London E9 5EN

Transport: Overground: Hackney Wick Bus:26.30.276.388.488.UL1

How To Be Sexy - academic proposal

Just submitted this proposal to my colleagues in the Performance Matters research project who will be editing a special issue of Dance Theatre Journal. Hope I get selected and that I can make this happen...

How To Be Sexy: Cosey Fanni Tutti and Mouse on The O Show

My research explores the relationship between different generations of women who I would define as ‘feminist performance artists’, looking to their work as examples for how to be a happy woman. This entails grappling with the ways in which both feminist art and self-help respectively (and perhaps in collaboration) can create a “sense of belonging” and “refusal[s] or creative contravention[s] to feminine normativity”.[1] Following on from theorist Lauren Berlant’s statement that “the woman who was adequate to [women’s culture industry’s] version of normal femininity was as powerful as a feminist would aspire to be”, my question is: What relationship to power and/or happiness can I achieve by simultaneously embodying avant-garde and popular models for female agency?[2]

            One outlet for this practice-based research is my new web-TV series The O Show which mimics the tropes of daytime television by incorporating interviews, how-to advice and makeovers, combining genuine storytelling with comical send-ups of the self-help industry. The chat-show format provides a framework in which to genuinely investigate questions at the heart of my doctoral research as well as to both critique and champion popular modes of knowledge dissemination and the confessional. For one episode I plan to interview performance artist Cosey Fanni Tutti and club performer Mouse, focusing on their respective experiences in the sex industry. The transcript and stills from the episode will form my contribution to the journal. Having these two artists on the show is an opportunity to explore the complexity of sex-positive feminism, specifically in light of the phenomenon of the prostitute-performance artist as well as to celebrate the legacy of historical figures such as Tutti and their impact on a contemporary generation of performers.

 



[1] Berlant, Lauren, The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture, Durham: Duke University Press, 2008, p.4.

[2] Berlant, Lauren, The Female Complaint, p.178.