Performances #4, #5, #6

Girl in Suitcase

12, 13, 14 August 2011

At Out of the Blue Drill Hall, Leith on the Fringe Festival.

Six days after our performance of ‘Girl in Suitcase’ at London’s Mascara Bar, actress Jaki Loudon and I took my play to Edinburgh for a 3-night run at Leith on the Fringe. I described our work in Scotland during an interview with Ragged University:

“In Girl in Suitcase I wanted to capture some of the tension and estrangement that was present in my mother’s relationship with her daughters at the time portrayed. I also wanted to contrast the calm open space created by the life drawing sequences.

“There is a comparison between how the mother’s body has become an object through paralysis, which must be manipulated by others – often awkwardly so, in order to keep her alive – and how the daughter’s body used to be manipulated by strangers for their pleasure. Yet both characters arrive at a point of comfort with their situations, and both now spend long periods of time not moving, being perfectly still.

“The female body can be seen in this play as a hindrance, an object and ultimately as an instrument of power once the emotions and psyche have been tempered and channelled. It needn’t work in a conventional sense – walking about, having a job, and so on – but it serves a timely purpose. Sara (the mother) doesn’t need to do all those rudimentary things; what she needs is to be at peace with her offspring, her loved ones, and sometimes such limitations as illness may be perceived, can in fact open doors to deeper connection.

“The shift in the daughter/model’s predicament is embodied in her role reversal with the art tutor/mother. She recasts the art tutor in the role of model, stripping her of her clothes, and in the process the tutor loses her mobility. When the daughter tells the audience how to draw her, she – the former object – has a voice and an active will too.”

The full interview is online at Ragged University: ‘Girl in Suitcase’ transformation through life modelling.

Video

Full recording from one of the performances (1 hour and 7 minutes).

This video is free to access but if you would like to make a donation towards my work as an artist, it would be highly appreciated as the performance was entirely self-funded – paypal.me/EstherBunting