Preparation

Making the show for Telegraph Hill festival 2015

I choose itinerant self-employed work as it allows me freedom to be myself and to create. Girl in Suitcase is a theatrical performance art work, which engages the audience to draw the spectacle (and participate in further ways). I love making my own work and all the mistakes that go with it. The space, time and energy I take to create is sacred for me.

As a life model I am paid to please others primarily (though I enjoy it too), for their specifications. With Spirited Bodies I create a space for others to develop within (naturally the benefit is mutual). With Girl in Suitcase, while I am not without consideration for the audience, I am mainly doing the work for myself as well as the others involved, and for now (what is wonderful is) without worrying about selling tickets. If there is a very small audience that’s fine. The show is always a work in progress and without funding, it is subject to severe limitations. And yet, there is an unknown magic waiting to take place during the spectacle in the hearts and minds of all present. The unknown of what is Live, full of real life.

I enjoy the process immensely and like to work with friends. Earlier versions of the show, from 2011 – 2014 were autobiographical, about mine and my Mother’s life and were sometimes one or two women shows. The recent show began its life with my friend Sylvie Rouhani and I wanting to make a performance relating to the cycle of the moon, and the ages of woman, or different phases of a woman’s life. I was ready to depart from the personal, and expand into the more universal, and that was a wonderful feeling, like I’d completed some sort of performance therapy phase.

My friend Lucy Saunders had given me a book for Christmas – ‘The Alphabet Versus the Goddess’ by Leonard Shlain, and I was blown away by its feminist take on history and literacy. That inspired me to look at the ages of woman, through history – Goddess culture of the further past, and subsequent lower status of women since the Judeo-Christian-Islamic takeover. We started plotting the structure and themes in January and formulating the script in February. Sylvie was going through some upheaval in her life and could not continue with the show in March, so I asked Ursula Troche and Sabine Zollner to join me. The show was completed in the 3 weeks prior to performance with minimal rehearsals, but some new written and movement material from Ursula and Sabine.

Ursula Troche

While the process felt fractured and pressured towards the end, the show benefitted from being the product of 4 women finally, and I hope each of the women gained too. With Sabine’s belly dancing Isis, and Ursula’s call-to-arms poetry, we added to Sylvie’s powerful words. I also wrote parts as well as choreographed, directed and edited.

Isis has an incredible costume (with enormous wings!) and sensual dance which brought a new level of spectacle. Here are some words from Sabine about her involvement in the show;

“I called Esther on a Saturday early March and found her in distress. She told me that the lady she worked with on the third version of her play – Girl In Suitcase – had just let her know she could not continue to work on it, but the performance date was already set – for 3 weeks later.

I had seen the first version of GIS in March 2014 but had missed the second performance where the play had developed further.

I knew Esther was working on a third version and that it was emerging from a one woman show to something else, involving the moon and poems and getting less abstract than before but more related to life models, female feelings and divine figures.

I asked more questions during our phone conversation and discovered that some things appeared like déjà-vues to me: the goddesses Isis and Artemis whom she mentioned had crossed my path before and I was particularly intrigued by the Egyptian Isis of whom I had a clear picture in my head without knowing what exactly she was about at that point. Everything seemed very obvious when Esther explained she hadn’t thought about costumes yet and I remembered a belly dance performance called ‘Isis dance’ I had seen 20 years ago.

I said I had some ideas for Isis as I have 2 Egyptian dance costumes and could add a special veil to them, actually called ‘Isis wings’.

I quickly realised that due to the pressing time scale, the roles and the fact that I’d do this with Esther and Ursula whom I had known for a while too was some sort of fate for me to push myself to try performing – something that I always wanted to try. I knew I could perform as a belly dancer (which I had done a long time ago) but never performed spoken lines!

So I offered to step in.

Said and done we had only two rehearsal dates which made clear that there had to be some improvisation.

I went through my oriental music, let Esther pick the pieces she liked best and then did a very loose choreography on them.

My first lines as Isis were single words – a sequence of unrelated nouns. Esther let me invent movements for these which was relatively easy compared to speaking them out loud.

There was also a short exchange of words between Isis and Mother Mary and I found myself keen to make this scene funny and entertaining.

I think I always liked to make people laugh.

So the day of the performance came and I was not very nervous at all. I knew the space and as people were drawing I knew how they felt as I draw a lot myself.

I also liked my outfit very much – my friend gave me a hair piece and with some help my chest had temporarily grown to quite an impressive size. I also re-discovered heavy eyeliner from a long time ago (which I haven’t abandoned after the play since).

I deeply enjoyed being in the play and as I was one with my role and within our group of three I couldn’t feel more comfortable.

Afterwards, someone asked me if I wanted to model for him which was rewarding and the artwork that was produced was superb.

I met more than one person whom I knew from before but who hadn’t recognised me which made me think that I must look very different “in real life”. I don’t feel different though. Some food for thought.

The least comfortable part was probably seeing the photos and video footage of the evening for the first time. I am very critical with myself – especially as I am not a professional dancer and far from being an actor. However, it was maybe alright. But I also understood that the footage doesn’t matter too much.

The magic of theatre is very closely related to the moment of the performance and everything that goes with it – the energy of the performers and the audience and how they interact. After the play it is over and if it is performed another time these dynamics could be of completely different nature.

And I was glad to have been part of this.”

A week to go before Girl in Suitcase comes to The Hampstead School of Art. I have rewritten quite a lot to keep it fresh. I know what needs to be junked or rewritten when I am trying to re-learn the lines. If a scene doesn’t feel right, I just don’t want to learn it. I have to get a kick out of each scene. There has to be some sort of continuity, though the show is fairly abstract, playing around with time, me shifting between 2 different characters, which sometimes could be and are the same person. That’s cool. They are Mother and daughter, and as you get older you start to realise, you are becoming your parents whether you like it or not!

The musicians will take on the whole score this time, no recorded music. So I had to get clearer about exactly which lines they were coming in on with which instruments. It’s not easy getting 5 pretty disparate people together to rehearse so time together is very precious. Learning how to think as a conductor or composer is a bit radical for me, being able to articulate what I want from them, but the art of working together is appreciated. It could just be me and my sound system (and at some point it might be) but sharing this process with others helps to get me out of my head!

The writing is something I usually do alone, though there are certain people who deeply inspire me. I take notes whilst in the company of my very good friend Szilvi. She knows me so well and has long been a creative partner of mine. There is this fire in her, I’m not sure if it’s because she’s a Leo or it’s the Hungarian in her, but she describes her pain or her excitement with such delicious colour. Some lines in the play are just plain Szilvi! I rock up at hers on the way home from work on a day when I’ve been totally blocked, and within minutes my notebook is out, trying to keep up with her dynamic spiel. I love that woman.

Then there’s Mum whom the play is actually largely about. That’s hard as feeling too emotional about the content inhibits my ability to engage with it or play with it. Hence Szilvi. Between the two of them I access most of the ideas. In the way that only someone who knows you deeply really can, Szilvi will tell me straight what I need to do. She’s not afraid of upsetting me and she has a fabulous instinct for drama. She doesn’t so much suggest an idea as perform it for me. Of course if she was available I’d invite her to perform, but we are not sharing that particular path for the time being.

My boyfriend Aaron listens to a lot of scenes and feeds back. He loves good writing, usually on television, or science fiction, and has an ear for what works or how I might adjust something.

I’m posting some pictures from a session I was modelling at this evening because I like them so much (they don’t really have anything to do with the show except they are life drawings with me in them!) I was asked to bring in black stockings and high heals. Well it was liberating. I’m quite a lazy girl in general on the girl front, I mean dressing up. Now and again I go for it, but being asked to wear heals, and not to walk in, just pose, was awesome! I could feel the temperature going up in the room! Stockings too, it all got a bit Toulouse Lautrec. Some very pretty artwork so that’s why I’m posting. I tell you, it’s a whole different set of muscles to negotiate in stilettoes, and they don’t get out of my bedroom enough. It felt a little erotic, though actually the poses are very similar to what I would normally do. Just adding some simple French brothel parafernalia makes all the difference. Loosened me right up, it was a nice gift just as the midsummer full moon approaches.