Been thinking a lot recently about unrealised ideas. Below is the in-progress script I began last year for a high budget film about an aspiring actress/dancer who discovers performance art and her life is transformed. The start of the script is based on John Travolta's Staying Alive. 

WORKING TITLE: Staying Live

Synopsis:

The protagonist, Laura is an aspiring performer (dancer/actor). She’s taking dance classes and going on auditions with little success. To support herself she works in a night club as a cocktail waitress, she can’t even get a gig as a dancer in the club like her friend Jane. At the start of the film we get a glimpse into Laura’s hand-to-mouth existence and see her envy of her friend Jane’s success in both an audition and at the club.

On a notice-board at her dance school, Laura spots an advertisement seeking performers with a certain body type for a performance in a prestigious art gallery and she goes for it. She, Jane and Deborah (her mentor/dance instructor) are all offered roles. Laura thinks she’s finally getting lucky and that her career is about to blossom. Unfortunately, the opportunity is not quite what she expected and is very demanding and demeaning work. They all have to have their hair cut and dyed and to be fully waxed. They stand completely exposed and as motionless as possible for hours in high-heeled shoes that are the wrong size so their ankles swell and feet blister – all for the perfect photo. The photos are taken at the direction of the artist who is always mysteriously absent from the shoots/rehearsals which are run by her assistant.

(Scene idea: the girls talking ‘backstage’ as they change. Unlike Laura and her two friends, some of the other girls come from modelling background and others from a fine art background. The models say they would never have put up with this shit for a regular modelling gig, but they were willing to do more because it was ‘for art’. The artists explain that they were interested in being part of a performance art piece but gripe about the lack of criticality of the work, how it doesn’t compare to 70s feminist performance art. Laura listens and is curious, but doesn’t completely understand the arty girls.) 

One night Laura has a surreal dream that Jane takes over the performance by pulling a colourful scarf and beads from her vagina. This is sort of day residue as we have seen Jane perform a burlesque number in the club using a similar scarf but in a different way. When she’s getting ready for the performance she confides in Deborah about the dream, and one of the arty girls overhears and laughs and says that would be awesome, better yet she should pull a scroll out just like Schneemann did.

Laura is intrigued by this and googles Schneemann which propels her to learn more. Montage sequence: Laura stretching in empty dance studio, wrapping her feet and ankles in bandages (à la Flashdance) intercut with shots of her at the library searching the stacks (à la Legally Blonde) for books on feminist performance art.

Before the day of the gallery performance Laura has a dream. The dream sequence merges canonical performance art pieces with hollywood musical dance numbers and original songs. 

By the end of the film Laura becomes a performance artist and finds love. 

Characters: 

LAURA/ MODEL 1 (scroll-reader) 

JANE/MODEL 2    

DEBORAH/MODEL 3 

MODEL 4 

DIRECTOR

ADDITIONAL DANCERS/MODELS 5-12

DIRECTOR’S ASSISTANT 

SCENE 1 / Opening Credits: INT – THEATRE – DAY

DANCERS & MODELS doing 80s jazz/pop choreography like the start of Staying Alive (1983)[1]. DIRECTOR and ASSISTANT eye up dancers, choose dancers to go through to next round, dismissing the others. Montage of wide and medium shots of dancing groups and close-ups of DIRECTOR and ASSISTANT is inter-cut with shots of JANE and LAURA as they stretch, warm up and mentally prepare for their turn. JANE and LAURA’s group takes to the stage, LAURA fumbles almost immediately and steps out discouraged and upset. JANE goes onto next round. Shot of LAURA at back of theatre watching in envy.

SCENE 2: EXT – LONDON STREET - DAY

LAURA exits stage door into crowded streets. She walks for a while (dissolve shots) into shot of LAURA entering Dance Studio (camera pulls up to reveal sign above door).

SCENE 3: INT – DANCE STUDIO – DAY

DEBORAH is warming up in an empty dance studio. LAURA enters.

LAURA

Hi.

DEBORAH

Hi. You’re here early. Class doesn’t start for another half hour.

LAURA

I know. I got out of my audition early.

DEBORAH

How’d it go?

LAURA

I fell flat on my ass on the first turn.

DEBORAH

Oh, shit… at least you’re putting yourself out there. That takes courage.

LAURA

Not sure if it’s courage or temporary insanity.

DEBORAH

                                    (consolingly)

Cheer up, kid, there’ll be other auditions. You’re just learning, be patient with yourself.

LAURA looks forlorn.

DEBORAH

       (jokingly)

Quit feeling sorry for yourself, it’s bad for your complexion!

       (more serious now, but smiling)

Come on show me the routine they had you do…practice makes perfect!

LAURA puts her stuff down and starts to dance – she’s competent but awkward.

DEBORAH

       (encouraging and passionate)

Look in the mirror at yourself, you love to dance! Give it some attitude!

LAURA gives it a bit more pizzazz and is noticeably better.

                        DEBORAH

That’s it! You’ve got potential, real potential here.

Other classmates start to arrive and gawk at her. LAURA starts to look more exhausted.

OTHER CLASSMATE

Why does she get private lessons?

SCENE 4: EXT – LONDON STREET - SUNSET

LAURA runs across street in front of traffic and enters council flat.

SCENE 5, INT – (MONTAGE) LAURA’S HALLWAY/ BEDSIT/ BATHROOM/ HALLWAY/ CLUB – EVENING

LAURA walks up flights of stairs and passes trashy (possibly tranny) homeless person sitting on steps.

Enters Bedsit, throws her bag down and takes off her jacket, hangs it up, then pulls off her top.

LAURA is in the shower, her back to the camera – she’s washing her leotard, tights and bra with a bar of soap as she showers.

LAURA walks down stairs, again passing homeless person.

Establishing shot of night club, extras dancing, LAURA is carrying a tray of drinks, navigating a circuitous route through crowd, trying not to spill them. LAURA brings drinks to a table, change is left on the tray for her to pocket. Male and female clientele take turns winking or otherwise flirting with her. She does spill a few drinks discombobulated by the crowds of dancers. She heads to the bar to pick up a new set of drinks.

LAURA

            (to bartender)

I need another round of my last order. Last one ended up on the floor like my ass did at my audition earlier.

BARTENDER

Tough break.

            (fixes drinks and hands them to LAURA bemused)

                            Better hurry it up, the entertainment’s about to start.

Reflections on Scottee's Entertainment Value Workshop:

For me the first day of the workshop was like the first day back at school after a long summer break. I was still in vacation mode and it was really challenging to come up with new performance works on the spot. I enjoyed the getting to know you exercise at the start of the workshop when everyone talked about their work vis-à-vis a prop, poem or image, etc. (I brought in my Sarah Palin Genital Panic costume including beaver.) The other performers in the workshop (Liz Clark, Rebecca Weeks, Victoria Melody, Scarlett Lassoff, Kayla St Claire and Ophelia Bitz) were all fascinating women and I wanted to know more about all of them. I also really enjoyed hearing the story of Scottee’s awakening to the world of performance through a workshop at the Camden’s People’s Theatre when he was around 15 years old and living in a nearby council estate. He thought he was signing up for something along the lines of ‘play-acting’ but ended up being exposed to avant-garde anti-theatre and did his first ever performance in the very room in which the workshop took place. This involved the audience (which was made up of his and the other participants’ parents) being blindfolded, subjected to loud music, squirted with water and slapped with playing cards.

The warm-ups were standard drama school stuff, walking at our own speed, mirroring each other and then breaking out into our own paces. We then were asked to come up with three poses from a past performance that we had done and came up with 3 new ones as a group. In pairs we sat in chairs and struck these poses at irregular rhythms, moving on impulse, sometimes mirroring one another, sometimes interacting. Then we spent a little more time learning each other’s names and paired up to tell 3 truths and 1 lie about ourselves, repeating these facts about our partner to the group we had to then decide which was the lie.

The next activity was browsing through gossip magazines and tearing out anything that appealed to us. I had a hard time finding anything to rip out. Scottee said we had 40 minutes to come up with either an academic essay, a performance piece or an installation based on one story we had found. I couldn’t come up with anything; I wasn’t even sure what story to pick. Everyone seemed to be getting on ok. The second part of the task was to come up with a cabaret performance, a song or a stand-up comedy routine based around the same article. I now intellectually understood the exercise in that it was trying to get us to think about ‘high-art’ frameworks verses ‘low-art’ ones. The first part was meant to be academic/serious/high brow and the second part light entertainment. Unfortunately understanding this didn’t really make it any easier for me.

The ideas I had for the first part were already fitting better into the second category and yet that didn't make coming up with a second performance any easier either. I already merge these two categories in my work as a matter of course, so for the purpose of the exercise I decided at that point to purposely make something ‘serious’, a work of ‘performance art’ for the first piece and something stereotypically cabaret. In both cases I did something I wouldn't normally do. The story I chose was about girl of 18 who decided to be a stay-at-home mom and housewife to her 17 yr-old fiancé who went out to work. For the first 'serious' performance I did a reenactment of Faith Wilding’s Waiting (1971) but changed it to I couldn’t wait. I mimed a vacuuming motion repeatedly whilst describing 'my' life as the girl in the article, ‘I couldn’t wait to be born, I couldn’t wait to wear make-up, I couldn’t wait to have a boyfriend, I couldn’t wait to have a baby, I couldn’t wait to bake cupcakes, I couldn’t wait to run a hot bath for my husband after his long day at work, I couldn’t wait to cash my first tax benefit cheque’, etc. The feedback was fairly positive, but I don’t think anyone got the reference to Wilding’s performance.

Most of the other participant’s performances were fantastic, really humorous and playful or thoughtful and well-composed. Rebecca focused her academic essay on an article that claimed Jack The Ripper might have been a woman - she evaluated it as if it were a piece of literature using the strategy of gender reversal. Scottee remarked that he was surprised how much gender entered into all of our pieces, but Rebecca commented that it was perhaps because of how gendered the subject matter was - gossip rags are made for women.

I wasn’t very happy with what I had done, not simply because it’s a knee-jerk response for me to cite a Womanhouse work, but also because it felt strange to make something about someone else, a story in a magazine that I wouldn’t normally read. The exercise made me conscious of my own preferences/limitations – that I find it easy to rely on the work that pre-dates me, that I am driven to make work that is personal to me, that I prefer complexity. Since the starting point for the exercise was by default superficial – a trashy magazine article – I didn’t feel right simply being critical, that would have felt too judgmental and simplistic. How could I judge this person, who is most likely more complicated than the article conveys, who probably sold her story out of financial need? Even though I chose the article because I do relate to her desires, I didn’t think to implicate myself in my performance, maybe because I was thinking a little too literally about the assignment. Or maybe I was embarrassed to admit these feelings. Perhaps if I had it would have been a more satisfying piece. I was reticent to perform the piece I'd thought of for the second part of the task, but did a sort of burlesque number, trying to seduce the audience with the persona of this girl who just wanted to have a baby and be a housewife. Again, I didn't really allow myself to get into the work on a personal level, too embarrassed to perform in that way and express those thoughts even under the guise that they were really someone else's. It was strange that despite thinking of the workshop as a place to experiment and take risks, I didn't allow myself to do so fully. It still felt too public, not the safe space that female-dominated environments are theoretically supposed to be. 

We started the second day with improvisation exercises, firstly to create a story, each person adding a sentence or two. Then we did an Augusto Boal exercise in which two people shake hands, they freeze and one exits, a third person enters posing so as to create a new narrative, and so on, sometimes poses would include a third and fourth person, then we could manipulate each other’s bodies to change the story or add language into people’s mouths. I’m intrigued to learn more about Boal, not just his dramatic games and exercises but about his life and work. Then we did an exercise called ‘Hotseat’ in which each person had to create a persona and respond to interrogation-like questions from everyone else. The questions that are asked can really steer the interview and the adopted personality in a different direction, demanding off-the-cuff responses. For example, one of Scottee’s questions for one of the artist’s was “Marina, why have you turned away from durational work towards characterisation?” When it was my turn, I ended up being a woman with my own chicken farm who survived on the eggs as well as berries and wild mushrooms I foraged. She/I was part of a cult-like church that forbid the wearing of purple. I read everyone’s chakras and for some reason I got very emotional when Scottee asked me if I would like some help with the use of colour in my own fashion choices.

We had been asked to bring in a piece of music that we would like to use in a performance and were then given 20 minutes to prepare a contemporary dance piece, movement or jumping around to it using the tools of impulse, rhythm and improvisation that we had learned. Without giving it much thought I brought in the title track of Marlo Thomas and friend’s album Free to Be You and Me. It was not in fact a song that I’d wanted to work with, just one that I really liked. Other people confessed to taking the same approach, but in my mind they had much stronger results. After I ran around, skipping and prancing to the banjo beat of ‘Free To Be You and Me’, pretending to be a flowing river and using a lot of jazz-hands, it was interpreted by Scarlett as an advertisement for the hippy lifestyle.

photo: Darrell Berry

She probably wasn’t too far off, but Scottee read it as a musical number from the bible-belt which was strange and I felt a little stereotyped as an American. Scarlett did an anti-striptease number wherein her pointedly un-sexy sock controlled the rest of her body in wanting to be rolled up and down her calf. Rebecca’s performance to PJ Harvey’s ‘Rid of Me’ was for me the most moving performance of the two days, full of pain yet totally seductive – the kind of work I don’t have the guts to do except perhaps as pastiche. 

Scottee then lead the group through a guided visualisation as we lay on the floor in the dark. After some deep breathing and relaxing of the muscles, we were told to picture ourselves sinking into warm sand and being engulfed. Then I was told I was stepping into the spotlight of a cabaret stage and performing, the audience loved me. Then (as Scottee described) I stepped off stage and my costume changed. The room turned white and I was in the centre performing again and being warmly received by the audience. After resurfacing to the beach among friends, Scottee then drew the visualisation to a close. He asked us to reveal what we saw during the two performances within the visualisation. In the cabaret setting I had pictured myself showing an egg to people at The Royal Vauhall Tavern and in the second part I was at my own wedding about to kick off the first dance and I wondered what song would play. Some of the other artists had had quite elaborate visions of performances and costumes. I realised after that this white space was probably intended by Scottee to signify a gallery space. He gave us the homework assignment to somehow recreate these imaginings as a photograph or some kind of still image, not to question why we were doing it, but simply to make it happen.

After that we didn’t have much time left and were told to work individually to develop a performance piece that we wanted to do but hadn’t yet made. We were to develop the piece using the following tools that had come up throughout the workshop: visualisation, hot-seat character improvisation, improvisational storytelling, impulse, narrative poses, cycles & repetitive movement, live art installation or academic paper, cabaret piece, song, comedy routine. This was tough, yet again because I hadn’t really come very prepared. I found it difficult to choose what work to develop and before I knew it time was up. We then had one minute each to pitch the idea and a few minutes for feedback. I pitched an idea for a performance art musical but ran out of time before I could really get into the details of it.  

In a way, a piece of musical theatre about performance art would fulfill the premise of this particular workshop to a tee – and it’s an idea I had years ago, but haven’t fully developed. I wish I had been able to focus my mind on that project from the very start of the workshop and I might have been able to get more out of all of the exercises. I guess I was hoping to get new ideas and move my work in directions I hadn’t previously taken, rather than rehashing or redeveloping old ones. In the end I left a little disappointed. 

About two years ago people started referring to me as a performance artist. The label stuck because I seemed to be doing more and more performance and I preferred being called that than ‘video artist’. Since becoming part of the trashing performance research group lead by Gavin Butt, I’ve started to question the gallery space as the default location for my work and become interested in trying out the cabaret scene. It sounded great when Gavin talked about the itinerancy of certain performance artists going from club venue to gallery space to TV chat show. I think I could have something to say in each of those arenas and I’m curious to see how the varying audiences in those locations would respond to my work. I saw participating in this workshop as a step in that direction, but left feeling that that premise and desire went unexplored. Instead it was a place to try out new techniques, experiment and meet new people. 

More pics of the workshop can be found on Scottee's blog. 

Nelly McKay would make a great guest on The O Show. Maybe one day...

for our freedom years is a reaction to women's 'culture', to the idea that as women we share the same ideals, beliefs, ethos and problems, fundamentally the same identity. An identity that is expected and in many cases embraced by many females in mainstream society. We would like to invite you to give a talk at our exhibition in relation to themes addressed within the show and how they not only relate to your practice but your own positioning of yourself as a ‘modern’ woman. The event/talk can be given in any way you like, whether it be a performance or a seminar.

The the exhibition will run from 28 October to 11 November. The show will be held at Townhouse Gallery, an antique shop and gallery set within a Georgian house which we will take over. The show will also be a part of Photomonth and Time Outs First Thursdays. 

Frida Kahlo, Fruits of The Earth (1938)

[This is the fourth excerpt from my review of the book Frida Kahlo Face to Face by Judy Chicago and Frances Borzello, for which I interviewed Chicago on 17 June 2011.]

            Speaking of empathy, popularity and politics, I often found myself seeking out gossip within the pages of the book Frida Kahlo Face to Face. Certain passages provided more joy than others; one of the best examples is on p. 188 where Chicago infers that Kahlo experienced ‘near-unending sexual orgasms’ because of her depiction of Fruits of the Earth (1938). Having read Chicago’s autobiography Through the Flower and its description of her sexual awakening and concomitant multiple orgasms, I am familiar with the themes that occupy her mind and the language she uses to describe them. Reading her refer yet again to sexologists Masters and Johnson in the Frida Kahlo book, I thought to myself ‘typical Judy’ and was about to conclude that her interpretation of the still life was pure projection. A few pages later, however, another of Kahlo’s still lives is reproduced entitled The Bride Frightened at Seeing Life Opened (1943), seeing that painting I was forced to recognise that Chicago’s perception of sexual metaphors in Kahlo's gourds might be more apt than it had at first appeared.

            It’s undeniable that private matters spur curiosity, but can I find a political motivation behind such prying? When Chicago repeatedly distances herself from Kahlo, shocked by the way she put up with husband Rivera’s philandering and takes this as evidence of ‘a disparity in [their] personalities’, I wondered if what she claimed to be a matter of psychology was really a result of the different places in time they occupy.[1] How do you separate the two? It may be fair to assume that had Kahlo been alive today, she would have reacted differently to Diego’s infidelities.[2] There is also the view that Kahlo gave as good as she got because she did, after all, have a few extra-marital affairs of her own. In Borzello’s words, yet another of the painter’s paradoxes was: ‘[s]exual adventuress yet undying love for Diego’.

            Relatedly, Marlo Thomas’ Huffington Post article “Men Behaving Badly… It’s a Good Thing” focuses on the recent trend of American women in the public eye refusing to ‘stand by their man’ after they’ve been cheated on. Thomas commends these women along with the hotel maid who reported that she was raped by French politician Strauss Kahn. Masses of women protesters outside Stauss Kahn’s arraignment hearing illustrate Thomas’s statement: “We are seeing the end of a tradition and the beginning of a revolution.”[3] I would argue that the revolution already happened; it is because feminists challenged the boundary between the personal and the professional that legislation protecting women against sexual harassment was introduced.[4] When Chicago discusses Kahlo’s self-depiction as victim, she quotes art historian Paula Harper, stating: ‘women artists were more inclined to present themselves as victims rather than to portray men as perpetrators’.[5] Not only women artists, but women in general failed to get angry or point the finger – that is, until now – as Thomas’ article highlights. Chicago goes on: ‘the absence of anger in [Kahlo’s] work might have contributed to her immense popularity in that the expression of rage in women, in both art and life, is still unacceptable.’ Rage turned inward (self-blame), was the accepted (and popular) response and one that women are now rallying against. SlutWalks are one example of such protests, as expounded on by Judy Chicago during the interview and afterward at her talk in The National Gallery.[6]

            ‘Sisterhood is powerful’ because recognising that you are not alone in your experience makes you feel better as an individual, bolstering you to forge ahead. More awareness of shared experience means more change, not just personally, but politically.[7] That said, I am conscious that while feminism claims to address all women across borders of space and time (whether they call themselves feminists or not), it is at best anachronistic to say that all women share something fundamental. Like a good ‘post-feminist’ I get a little uncomfortable when Chicago uses the word ‘universal’, yet I read the Face to Face monograph wanting to find commonalities between Kahlo’s, Chicago’s and my own experiences. Towards the end of the book, when Chicago admits to struggling with ‘internalising the needs and persona of a male partner till they overshadow one’s own’, I felt satisfied; now I shared yet another intimate thing with these two women.[8]

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.