Looking at Me Looking at You

I’m developing script, a performative response to photographer Kim Ayres’ bold black and white nude portraits of women over 50. I want the performance to somehow ‘unfold’ an exhibition of his work so that when the cast leave the space, it has become a gallery, the audience become viewers, their gaze transformed by the performance.

https://kimayres.blogspot.com/2019/05/body-image-and-older-woman.html

I’m working with a dramaturg, Drew Taylor, and three actors. http://drewmakestheatre.com/i-am-currently

This is a new way of writing for me, incorporating devising, spoken word, my poetic ‘voice’, and physicality.  

As a feminist forged in the late 70s and early 80’s I hope to challenge the contemporary media obsession with beauty and youth entwined, with the notion that old women are pitiful and powerless.

What sparked this? In 2014 I did a workshop exploring the menopause with visual and mixed media artists Jo Hodges https://www.johodges.co.uk/section818422.html and Denise Zygadlo http://www.denisezygadlo.co.uk/about-me.php for Changing Rooms. https://www.johodges.co.uk/articles_290786.html. Jo, Denise and Moxie DePaulitte inspired me to take risks, to begin to play with taboos about women’s bodies. I hope Gaze will say: “Look at me, look at us, making exhibitions of ourselves. We are visible not invisible”. Gaze will be a celebration of, and a salute to, the women in Kim Ayre’s Women Over 50 project. In Dumfries and Galloway around 50%  of the population is aged over 46 and of that 50% , just over half are women. I have lived here for 30 years, grown old here, yet I don’t often see theatre that addresses us, is created for and by us. I hope Gaze will challenge, offer provocations, and illuminations. I want to start a discourse.

This work is made possible thanks to a Bright Sparks Award, https://www.dgunlimited.com/bright-sparks.html