I’m not a fan of stereotypical femininity, so when my sister decided to organise a trip to see the stage version of Dirty Dancing for her hen night – with compulsory “prom dress” costumes – it sounded like my idea of pink, fluffy hell.

But I was pleasantly surprised to discover that when you get past the neon pink advertising and the frilly dresses, there are some surprisingly serious and complex themes woven into the plot. By the time we reached the interval I had been converted, but since it can be difficult to find anyone to discuss intersectional feminism with you on a hen night pub crawl, I’ve had to save my observations for the internet.

In case it’s been a while since you’ve seen the 1987 film, here’s a quick recap of the plot: in the summer between high school and college, Baby spends a few weeks with her well-off family at a holiday resort in the Catskills, where she meets Penny, a working class dance instructor who has recently become pregnant and then been dumped.

Penny desperately wants to have an abortion, but it’s illegal and therefore expensive and risky. On top of that, she can’t afford to take time off from her second job, performing at a neighbouring resort with her dance partner and platonic best friend Johnny.

Baby steps in to help her, first talking her father into lending her the money to pay for the abortion, then learning the dance routine so that she can take Penny’s place on stage. In the process of learning to dance, she has to spend lots of time with sexy dance instructor Johnny, in situations which conveniently provide excuses for him to be wet and/or shirtless, and they end up having a hot summer fling.

Although it’s easily overlooked in favour of her romantic relationship with Johnny, it’s Baby’s friendship with Penny which sets up the film’s feminist credentials: the main catalyst for the plot is one woman helping another woman to obtain an abortion. Unlike more recent American films about unplanned pregnancy, such as Juno or Knocked Up, Dirty Dancing approaches abortion from an openly pro-choice perspective. At no point does Penny face any moral judgement for her decision, but there’s plenty of criticism for the man who abandoned her, and the abortionist who charges her hundreds of dollars for a procedure that leaves her seriously ill.

But even before she makes her grand gesture of sisterly solidarity to Penny, Baby is presented as a feminist character. When she is first introduced, we learn that she is about to go to college (it’s later explained that she plans to study economics at a prestigious women’s college) and wants to join the Peace Corps after graduating. This stands in stark contrast to her sister Lisa, whose main ambition appears to be finding a husband. Lisa and the other female guests at the resort demonstrate the kind of comfortable yet uninspiring lifestyle that Baby has decided to reject in favour of having adventures and trying to save the world.

Baby’s determination to make a difference could have been presented as a straightforwardly positive trait, but her ability to help Penny is closely tied to her family’s wealth, and the writers use Johnny’s reaction to comment on her privilege. Johnny initially resents her involvement, and makes the scathing comment “it takes a real saint to ask Daddy” when Baby hands over the money for the abortion.

As they grow closer and Johnny begins to talk about his life and his precarious employment situation, Baby looks naïve and sheltered in comparison, but by the end of the film she has started to understand her own privilege and question her father’s assumptions about Johnny.

Baby’s class privilege affects the dynamic of her relationship with Johnny, giving her power and agency that goes against traditional gender roles. As a guest at the resort, Johnny relies on Baby’s cooperation for his continued employment, and he feels further indebted to her because she is paying for Penny’s abortion.

Baby’s background means that she’s used to getting her way, so she isn’t shy about talking back to Johnny during their early dance lessons, and she remains assertive when they grow closer, eventually being the one to initiate the sexual aspect of their relationship.

Women’s sexuality is a major theme in the film, and it’s actually kind of refreshing to see a film address women’s interest in sex without trying to dress it up in a desire for True Love. There are frequent nods to the female gaze, whether it’s through the blatant fanservice of Patrick Swayze’s shirtless scenes (set to music like Hungry Eyes), or the resort owner, reminding the nice, respectable college boys he has recruited as waiters that part of their job is to provide holiday romances for the younger female guests.

There are also comments about the “Bungalow Bunnies”, middle-aged women who stay at the resort all summer and are only joined by their husbands at the weekends, who use Johnny for sex in a reversal of the older-man-exploits-young-woman trope.

As a coming-of-age movie, the script also touches on the idea of sexual awakening, contrasting Baby’s experience with her sister Lisa’s. In one very brief scene (which starts at 0:50 of this clip), the two women discuss when they should lose their virginity, and Baby tells Lisa that it should be with “someone you sort-of love”; not necessarily the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, but someone you like and are attracted to.

Lisa sees sex as part of a long-term plan to persuade Robbie – who the viewer already knows is the sleazebag that dumped Penny when he got her pregnant – to marry her, while Baby, who isn’t deliberately looking for a husband, ends up with the better man and the more rewarding relationship. This might not be much of a revelation to many real women, but it’s unusual to see a chick-flick where the romantic happy ending doesn’t involve marriage and babies.

Dirty Dancing isn’t without its flaws: the Bungalow Bunnies fit what we would now call a cougar stereotype, and Johnny’s final speech about how Baby has taught him to be a better person might be kind of dodgy from a class perspective, but it’s a little unrealistic to expect a low-budget romance film from the 80s to be totally right-on.

It stands out, not because it’s perfect, but because the writers address class and gender issues at all, and as a result has been sneaking a little bit of Trojan horse feminism into teenage sleepovers and girls’ nights in for the last 25 years. It’s the feminist sleeper agent of chick flicks, and deserves a bit of recognition for that.

• Alyson Macdonald is an admin worker by day and a writer the rest of the time, blogging mostly at Bright Green and tweeting from @textuallimits. She wouldn’t normally be caught dead watching chick flicks, and hopes that her reputation as a scruffy geek survives this encounter unscathed.

Directed by Phyllida Lloyd, this is a gritty, bold production set in a women’s prison – and performed in a very small, intimate theatre space. This is almost punk rock Shakespeare, and occasionally it has some punk rock in it. If the Pussy Riot reference poster doesn’t clue you in already: this is a production with guts.

Julius Caesar isn’t a play I’ve studied in much depth, and I know plenty of other reviewers will do a better academic job, so I’m going to focus on what I liked about it:

1. More parts to female actors! Hooray! Also, the production necessitates a certain degree of queer/genderqueer acceptance, as both Brutus and Caesar’s wives play a significant part in the story. Get on board and get on with the plot.
2. The initial prison set-up is ingenious, and really adds a few layers for the first half – Caesar is a much-loved but bullying top dog in the setting. And one of the first things Frances Barber’s Caesar does when she comes on stage is smooch Mark Anthony (Cush Jumbo). Whoa! That makes… a lot of sense, actually, and adds a brilliant ambiguity to the characters’ different declarations of love for each other.
3. Did I mention punk rock? There’s a bit of live music with a drumkit on wheels used to brilliant effect.
4. The soothsayer is presented as the clearly-slightly-unhinged inmate who is usually seen carrying a doll and with her hair always in bunches. Adult-as-child is really unnerving and in this production, it adds a Cassandra-esque layer.
5. I admit it: at times I was perving. Holy hell, Cassius (Jenny Jules)’s abs are amazing.

One problem for me was that as the action scaled up after Caesar’s assassination, I wasn’t sure what to do with the prison setting. Part of my brain was still trying to work out what significance the setting still had – for best enjoyment you just need to leave that behind and focus on with the plot, but my brain couldn’t quite do it.

The setting and the tale make an interesting mix, but they don’t fit perfectly throughout. Brick it ain’t.

Also, there was an interesting dissonance between the ‘honour’ described (OK, makes sense) and the ‘love of Rome’ which motivated Brutus and Cassius (but why do you love this place? It’s… prison.)

But if the Torygraph is spitting bullets (twice) over the casting, you know you’re doing something right:

There is a certain poetic justice that Lloyd’s effort should find itself in direct competition with the classy, respectful and hugely entertaining all-male versions of Twelfth Night and Richard III, which are running in rep at the Apollo. These productions would undoubtedly have met with Shakespeare’s approval.

– Tim Walker, Telegraph 14/12/12

BUT WHAT ABOUT TEH MENS?

Dude, if you feel that threatened by affirmative action: there is everywhere else that you could go.

All in all this production is tough, gutsy and giving its all to sort out the massive under-representation of women in theatre.

And the modern, unpretentious setting gives you a huge amount to think about – above and beyond the plot of an already dense play. It’s on until the 9th of February.

A Toast to Glorious Awkwardness: Issa Rae

I bet she’s less awkward in real life. Either way, meeting the creative powerhouse behind the US web series Awkward Black Girl would surely make me spill the wine, partway through mumbling “If you ever need an awkward British cameo…” and accidentally spraying her with vol-au-vent crumbs¹ in my enthusiasm.

You know that whole Mary Sue adorkable adoraklutz trope we have going in Hollywood at the mo as a lazy way to round out female protagonists who have almost no other flaws (hi, Bella Swan, hi New Girl)? Awkward Black Girl is not like that. Nor is it Manic Pixie Dream Girl fodder (although in terms of what that archetype tends to look like, “who is the black Zooey Deschanel?” is certainly a question you might ask. Rae is not, FYI, the black Zooey Deschanel; indeed, she is not the [adjective] anything except “the awesome”, but that Racialicious post is, tangentially, an article very much worth your time).

Anyway, Issa’s hilarious, and her work is full of wryly-observed appeal.

Watch it here!

Don’t Mention the Moles: Sally Outen

Although, since we’ve documented that I’ll have spilled everything all over the table in a fit of awkward admiration when Issa arrives, why not mention the moles to divert everybody while I’m trying to find the kitchen roll? Sally Outen’s 2011 show Non-Bio, with its simultaneously side-splitting and toe-curling exploration of what happens when your first bit of sex-ed comes from Duncton Wood, was an Edinburgh Fringe must-see which I caught in a London bar with feminist burlesquers Lashings of Ginger Beer Time, with whom Sally often also performs, on her return. She came bounding onto the stage, radiating charisma, and proceeded to destroy my diaphragm. But it’s not all randy talpidae; Sally has a razor-sharp dig, drawing on her lived experiences, at transphobia and sexist bigotry. Frankie Boyle could learn a thing or two.

More about Sally!

Rock ‘n’ Roll Emboidery: Marjane Satrapi

I saw the animated adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis at the cinema and bawled my face off. But one reason why, by the end, I was blubbing away with such unfettered gusto and with no care for the integrity of the Barbican Centre’s upholstery was the deft, smart humour with which Satrapi introduces her memoir of growing up in Iran, deciding PUNK IS NOT DED, and dreaming of being either a prophet or the next Bruce Lee. Her art is instantly recognisable, all thick, clean, expressive lines and playful simplicity. Embroideries, her tribute to the women of her family and the stories they share, is just as beautiful and eye-opening.

An interview with Marjane!

Of Hurricanes and Wise Words: Grace Nichols

We’ve reached the midpoint of our dinner. This means I am probably drunk. On a thimbleful of wine. And about to begin clutching people’s sleeves, clumsily talking over them, apologising for being born, and going “YOU KNOW I LOVE YOU, RIGHT?”.

Guyanese poet Grace Nichols is probably the unfortunate recipient of the non-negotiable Soppy Speech, because I grew up reading her work in the classroom and at home (my mum taught at primary level for 40-odd years and used her as a literacy resource). Her humour in her writing for children isn’t so much punchy as it is gentle and cheering; moodygoth teenage me allowed herself a little moment of respite from body image fretting, aged 16, when my mum blu-tacked a copy of one of her children’s poems, Give Yourself A Hug, to the wall near my mirror. But I think the reason she’s so appealing has lots to do with the way she balances contemplative work like Hurricane Hits England with the sharply observed, dry indictment at the intersection of racism, sexism and sizeism of, say, The Fat Black Woman Goes Shopping, in which “The fat black woman could only conclude / that when it come to fashion / the choice is lean”.(I know I’m overusing “wry” and “warm” in this post but whatever, she’s a master of both, and MY PARTY, etc.)

What I’m basically getting at here is: she’s brill.

Big list of Grace’s work!

“Take That Ironic Shit Off”: Kate Beaton

The final implosion of my party into a maelstrom of inebriation and repeated burbling of “I want to be you” into the trifle. Webcomic Hark! A Vagrant: the premier resource for anyone who wishes to see me cracking up at my desk. I love it for its heady cocktail of imaginative historical detail (what if the Bronte sisters subscribed to Brooding Hunks magazine?), affection for Nancy Drew, clever lampooning of “straw feminism” (YOU DON’T NEED A TRAINER BRA LITTLE GIRL, COME WITH US TO THE MOON) and, er, the episodes of small round ponies eating indignant ghosts. Oh, and the younger-version-of-the-author comics. BOAT!

Hark! A Vagrant!

…. and there you have it. That’s my “Funny Women” party.

I wonder what your table looks like? Maybe you have a political figures table, or a women-from-the-ancient-world table, or a musical table. MANY TABLES THERE ARE, IN THE GRAND CAFE OF FEMINIST BLOGGING. LIKE VALHALLA BUT WITHOUT ALL THAT PHALLOCENTR-

– wait, this is the phase of the evening where I yell in capslock before collapsing. I think I’m partied out. Anyone got any Anadin? See you in the morning.

1. I can apparently make vol-au-vents in this little fantasia. In real life, these are in fact Ryvitas.

Photo: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders for Time Out(Time Out / Jeremy Goldstein / Penny Arcade)

Thanks to a suggestion from a friend, I recently managed to catch the end of New York performance artist Penny Arcade’s show Bitch!Dyke!Faghag!Whore! at the Arcola Tent in Dalston, London. That seemed like the right venue for it, with the tent walls, benches and tables it felt partway between cabaret and circus.

Normally, either of those words would have me running for the hills. My first boyfriend was a juggler, which after two years compounded my existing distaste for most forms of ‘fun’ and has left me with a severe allergy to audience participation of all kinds. For the record, I also dislike games, sport, karaoke, ‘street theatre’, children and dogs.

I decided to brave the striped tent of intense social awkwardness on this occasion because the friend who invited me has a similar outlook, so I could trust her not to shove me onstage. And also because the show is about sex and politics, two of my very favourite subjects.

Penny and her show

If you don’t know who Penny Arcade is, here’s her rather fascinating biography. And here’s a kind of trailer for the show from the Arcola to give you a flavour:

The video makes it look more raunchy than it really was – the dizzying, sexy, cabaret feel it tries to create was there, but I think my favourite bits of the show and the ones that have stayed with me are the points where the spectacle gave way to tenderness, solemnity and rage.

Penny Arcade employs stand up, memoir, satire, comedy character monologues and political rants to talk about censorship and sexual repression, class, sexuality, LGBTQI rights, HIV, feminism, gender, capitalism and Barbie.

There was also a lot of what other reviewers have apparently called ‘hippy stuff’ about there being one love and one hate and the importance of people breaking down the walls between them to work together for change. And a light sprinkling of green politics and anarchism.

It felt a bit fluffy, but the incredible passion, openness and warmth of Penny Arcade herself and her performance went a long way to breaking down my cynicism. Besides, in amongst the fluff were observations which hit home like a dart. On prejudice and discrimination for example: “They’re afraid of being it, so they want to make someone else it.” Yes.

Sexxxy dancing. Hm.

A mixed group of erotic dancers were onstage (and in the audience) most of the time, and Penny introduced them by name. As someone who doesn’t spend an awful lot of time in my usual life watching people dancing in thongs, it was an interesting experience. Safely bracketed by Art, and in the feminist hands of the show’s creator, I tried to honestly examine my own response to it without the fear of being complicit in exploitation.

It was sexy. Sort of. The thrustiness of the male dancers was just alarming, I found myself marvelling at it the same way I would watching a hummingbird beat its wings 80 times a second. But the women and the way they moved did flick my switches. Not much, but that could be because I was furiously analysing all my reactions as I had them, which is a bit distracting.

I’ve not got space here to go into my views on the sex industry (another day maybe) but they don’t fit comfortably into the boxes of ‘pro’ or ‘anti’. Early in the show Penny said she viewed erotic dance as the most powerful form of feminist expression because it was the only thing designed by women to control men, among the millions of things designed by men to control women. I don’t buy it. It worked for Salome, sure, but anyone else? If so, can one of you remarkable women please stop the government from renewing Trident for me please? BUT. That’s not to say it can’t be a form of feminist expression, and a powerful one at that.

The centrepiece of the show feels the closest to what I think of as performance art. A striptease with a US flag, performed by Penny Arcade herself while a video of Lenny Bruce’s famous rant about the illogical and repressive nature of US obscenity laws plays large in the background. She wasn’t in a spotlight, and whenever she received a cheer she would point at the screen to say ‘listen!’ It felt defiant but not triumphant, and stood out from the rest of the show as an act of resistance rather than a celebration.

Roll up, roll up

It turns out that Bitch!Dyke!Faghag!Whore! is now on at the Old Vic Tunnels in London until 1 September. If you feel that the sex industry and feminism are absolutely incompatible it’s probably not  a show you will enjoy, and yes, there were points where I felt a little uncomfortable. But any misogynists, homophobes, transphobes and racists who are reading – and I can only hope you’re here because you’re critically re-evaluating your opinions, at last – you will hate it. Let me buy you a ticket.

Things to read!

(Not all things I agree with or endorse but relevant and interesting. Also I’m categorically not a libertarian, ok? I’m Big State and positive liberty all the way).

• Feminists Against Censorship
• Feminists For Free Expression
• Let Them Eat Pro-SM Feminist Safe Spaces (thoughtful feminist blog about kink, now defunct but with a great archive)
• A bit of history: Mae West’s battles with censorship

Welcome to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival! Wave goodbye to your money, sobriety and any semblance of a normal sleep pattern. Say hello to the weird, the wonderful, and hysterical, dry-heaving laughter of a kind that won’t quite translate to the outside world.

Get ready to start spotting your idols just walking down the street, get ready to say ‘no thanks’ to flyers roughly every 30 seconds, and wind up taking them anyway because the person handing you them was funny/charming/in a funny costume/worryingly eager. Primarily: prepared to be completely overwhelmed for choice.

No poster stays up for long before someone posts another over it

The very first time I went to the Fringe, I just dipped in for a day when I happened to be in Scotland. My travelling companion and I almost had panic attacks when we started leafing through the Fringe Brochure (about 1/3 the size of a Yellow Pages directory and stuffed full of tempting offers). In the end, we managed three shows in one day, literally ran from one venue to another to make it in time and managed a pretty full Fringe experience: Debbie Does Dallas: the Musical, the wonderful Aussie musical comedy guys Tripod, and a belly-flop of a gig when we paid £10 to see Phill Jupitas Reads Dickens. It was literally just Phill Jupitas reading some of Dickens’ lesser-known short stories and – on that day – he was in a foul mood. Also: the day cost us £45 each in tickets alone. This was before I knew about the Free Fringe (more on that in a moment).

The great thing about the last couple of years when I’ve been up with a show (mostly just doing the flyering for them) is that way you have a big group of mates up there, and you can learn from each other’s viewing mistakes and benefit from each other’s recommendations. There are more shows at Edinburgh than you’ll ever be able to get through, even if you’re there for the full three weeks with both a millionaire’s budget and a jetpack to get from venue to venue – so choosing how to spend your time is important.

Royal Mile

Lying on the floor in an ‘installation’: my unfavourite flyering technique

This is where is all happens. The Royal Mile is a cobbled, pedestrianised stretch of road which – for the time of the Fringe – will become a gauntlet of street performers, impromptu performances, and a small forest’s worth of flyers. Shows with cool costumes will be flyering in character, improvisers will be improvising, musicians will be singing, and three small Fringe stages will be showing 10-20 minute showcases from a wide variety of shows.

PBH Free Fringe

The PBH Free Fringe is a wonderful institution. It’s been running since 1996, put together by a guy called Peter Buckley Hill (known to many as PBH.) As the Fringe became more and more expensive, the financial risks increased for performers. While headline names from the telly have guaranteed audiences, the vast majority of performers will be lucky if they break even after a run. As the main groups of venues increased their prices over the years, the financial risks of taking a show up to the Fringe also increased. A debt of a few grand isn’t unheard of, and is easily enough to wipe out a small arts troupe. To counteract this, PBH set up the Free Fringe, where performers don’t pay for the venues and audiences don’t pay to enter.

There’s lots of bucket-shaking at the end, but you can see a show and then decide what it’s worth. A good guide: give as many pounds as you would give it stars (out of five). If it sucked – you can just walk out. No obligation. No misgynistic asshole will call. If it rocked your world, give them a fiver (or more!) and buy a book or a CD from the performers. It’s good manners to buy a drink at the venues to make sure they stay with the Free Fringe next year, and to make sure you have enough change at the end. (If you’re broke, you can always just shake the performer’s hand and say thank you.)

Fringe Adventurer’s Cheat Sheet

• Get hold of a PBH Free Fringe guide as soon as you ca.n It lists all the free shows and is arranged by time (not the mind-boggling alphabetic listing of the main programme) so if it’s, say, 3:00 and you want to to see something before your next show at 5:00, it’s easy to flip through and see what’s on.
• Avoid TV names unless you really, really love them. Because their shows are guaranteed to be pricier, and – though it’s not the same – you see them at home on the telly anyway. It’s worth remembering at the Fringe that small audiences don’t necessarily mean bad performances and big audiences don’t mean quality. Go take a punt on something weird and wonderful for cheaps. You might not be able to see it anywhere else.
• Try to get enough sleep. Yes, this runs antithetical to the spirit of the Fringe where there is a constant pressure to do and see everything, and some of the best shows are on late at night, but try to get enough sleep to stay sane, healthy, and up to the task. A couple of times in the past, I’d realise I was finding something intellectually funny but was just too shattered to fully appreciate it. Other times there were slumps and tears. Just… look after yourselves, eh guys?
• Comfortable Shoes. You will be walking up and down a lot of hills, often cobbled, and often in the rain. Get some comfortable footwear, and maybe carry a change of socks to prevent trenchfoot. You don’t want to end up like I did last year, losing a whole afternoon to a trip to A&E to have a swollen, numb, tingly foot looked at. (Nothing broken, luckily, but annoying nonetheless.)

And, finally, recommended shows

These are on my Edinburgh to-do list on account of how I’ve seen the performers (and sometimes whole preview shows) already and I can vouch for their awesomeness. These are arranged alphabetically to avoid having to pick or choose an order:

The Beta Males – The Space Race

I’ve been a mad fangirl for these guys ever since I saw some little show of theirs in a room above a pub. Huge, howling belly laughs roughly every 10 seconds. These guys are taut, high-energy, dark and twisted, but never go for cheap shots. Blokey without ever straying anywhere near asshat UNILAD territory. Their shows are a series of sketches with an overall plot arc, and their first show I saw – The Bunker – is still quoted in my group of friends with the fanaticism of Monty Python fans. Trailer here. Random awesome YouTube video of theirs here.

Dirty Great Love Story
A two-person love story told through poetry. That explanation doesn’t begin to do it justice. It’s heartfelt, down to earth, sometimes awkward, sometimes hilarious, and with polished flows which will make you pause and go “ooooh” until another line brings you back up cackling. Written and performed by spoken word allstars Richard Marsh and Katie Bonna. Trailer here.

Fat Kitten Improv
I first saw these guys in 2009 and I’ve been hooked ever since. Full disclosure: they are my mates. Fuller disclosure: they’re my mates ’cause I loved them on stage so much I set about getting to know them. Once reviewed as “well-spoken but batshit insane”. Also they’re a mixed-gender team of predominantly huggable lefty feminists and won’t take cheap shots. Except the odd cock joke. (Hee hee. Cocks.) Improvised comedy will be different every time, so if you like them you can keep coming back and always see something fresh. Shout out your own suggestions and see them acted out for your viewing pleasure. Dance, monkeys, dance! Part of the PBH Free Fringe. Sample here.

Lashings of Ginger Beer Time
Like many things at the Fringe, these guys are hard to pin down – so I’ll go with their own description: “Lashings of Ginger Beer Time is a Queer Feminist Burlesque Collective. Combining songs, dancing, stand-up and sketches, luxe Victoriana drag with thigh-high fetish-boots, upbeat musical theatre optimism with 21st-century political rage, this is music hall for the internet age.” Saw them the other week with fellow BadReppers Jenni, Rhian and Miranda and the show really made me laugh. And cry. Like, lots. *shakes fist* *fails to hold grudge* *hugs Lashings people* Taster vids here.

Loretta Maine
Musical Comedy creation of the wonderful Pippa Evans, Loretta Maine is a fucked up Courtney Love-esque singer songwriter. Vulnerability, self-destructive everything, kickass and more than a hint of menace. Her show two years ago, I’m Not Drunk, I Just Need to Talk to You, was a highlight of the Fringe and I’ve had the poster on my wall ever since. Song here. Another one here. Clip of previous show here.

Max and Ivan Are… Con Artists
Two man high energy sketch duo. They share a lot of awesomes with the Beta Males in their format – minimal, inventive staging, a cast of bizarre characters and a high-energy sketch show with an overall narrative. This year’s one is about a band of assassins, and Max Olesker doing his Joanna-Lumley-posh-voiced character makes me feel funny things in my tummy. Trailer here.

The Mechanisms
Musical steampunks in space. “A band of immortal space pirates roaming the universe in the starship Aurora. If you’re very lucky, they might sing you a story before they shoot you.” With a sound defined as ‘Space Folk’ and mad theatrics and kick-ass (feminist!) reworkings of traditional songs and fairy tales. But IN SPACE! Full disclosure: my housemate is in this one. Complete full disclosure: I had to contain my fangirling when I heard their album, because otherwise it could have been awkward. Part of the PBH Free Fringe. Musical preview here.

Other Voices Spoken Word
Oh hai, this is my show. I mentioned it the other week. Put together by the wonderful Fay Roberts and featuring (I’m not just saying this) some of my favourite female performance poets on the scene, I’m chuffed to bits to be part of it. We’ve had some very nice reviews already. Apparently I “delighted the room with poems laced with puns and elegant, elaborate language. By turns comic and poignant, political and surreal, Hannah’s poetry made the audience laugh and made them think, a dangerous combination.” Just sayin’. Part of the PBH Free Fringe.

• The 2012 Fringe runs from 3-27 August.

“It started with just scribbling the odd rhyme by myself in my teens. Then I went away to university and learned you can have poetry slams, but even then I didn’t really take to it. Then, in 2009, I moved back to London. Not many of my friends had moved back yet and I didn’t know many people and then one night I just fell into the wrong crowd… you know how it goes.”

OK, not quite, but from the way many people respond when the subject comes up…. you’d think it was something at least a bit distasteful. And when it’s not great, it’s not great, but when it’s good: holy shit, you have no idea.

See Exhibit A:

When it’s done right, performance poetry (or ‘spoken word’ as it’s often coyly referred to) is a thrilling, visceral, hilarious and beautiful experience, going everywhere from music-backed comedy to rap to beat and sonnets. Most nights have an open mic section, too, so the opportunity to try your hand and get involved is always there.

This is one of the first pieces I saw performed live, and I was hooked:

Three gigs and a couple of glasses of wine later and I was on stage trying my hand in the Hammer & Tongue slam. I came second. No going back. Though I’ve been a writer for years, there’s something incomparable about seeing your work hit an audience – getting gasps and laughs right where you hoped they’d be. And – when it doesn’t quite hit the mark – you’ve just had a room full of feedback. OK, back to the drawing board – cut the third stanza, up the ending, sort the rhythm in the third line and try again next week.

And now – wonder of wonders – I’m part of Other Voices, a poetry show that’s going up to the Edinburgh Fringe and is organised by the ‘Welsh whisperer’ Fay Roberts. The shows are (according to an audience member on Sunday:

“A heady blend of rhythms – poems that catch you in the throat, stories so compelling that you realise you haven’t taken a breath in minutes, and if you start to take yourself too seriously, then surely someone will tell life in words so true you wonder if they are reading your diary.”

So, yeah. I’m pretty stoked. The vibe is big, vampy and bold. Red drapes, candles, and did I meantion the bowls of heart-shaped sweeties? The booked acts are an array of outspoken women weaving words about whatever we damn like. We have a London premier this Thursday 26 July at the wonderful Hackney Attic (Facebook event here) featuring Fay Roberts, Sophia Blackwell, Fran Isherwood, Isadora Vibes, and yours truly – Hannah Eiseman-Renyard.

If you read BadRep, there’s a strong chance this is relevant to your interests.

Here’s my own contribution (dressed like a goth glitterball because showbiz):

• Other Voices: Alternative Spoken Word Cabaret, at the Hackney Attic tomorrow, and then the Edinburgh Fringe. Book tickets for tomorrow here or see above for Edinburgh.

Ah! Forget My Fate Part II consists of an ambitious three-woman staging of Purcell’s most famous opera, Dido and Aeneas. A courtly drama with a twist, the production asks: how can the most powerful woman in Carthage survive when her worst enemies lie within?

It’s been a little while since we heard from Better Strangers Feminist Opera Collective. Back in November last year, our Sarah C interviewed them about their show – the first part of their Ah! Forget My Fate! project. Hodge and I went to the show – “part-opera, part-cabaret abridged history of women in opera” – and I’d definitely recommend them.

This week – on Thursday 26 July at 10pm – they’re back at the King’s Head in Islington, North London. They sent us this Q&A press release about the show – Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas – and their work.

Why would a feminist opera company put on Dido and Aeneas?

“Because in many ways, Dido and Aeneas is where it all started. Whether or not Dido and Aeneas is the first opera in Western classical tradition is up for (interminable and pedantic) debate, but it’s certainly one of the earliest that’s regularly performed – particularly here in the UK where we’re based. And Dido is the first in a noble tradition of heroines who die an arguably completely pointless death (in the context of the opera as a self-contained work, anyway), so to me it makes sense for us to begin at the beginning.

“It was also written, we think, to be performed by a girls’ school, which makes it well suited for modern adaptations with exclusively female voices.

“A personal motivation for me is that Dido is a really interesting feminist figurehead. As a ruler, she refused to submit to any kind of conquest (sexual, emotional or literal) from the men around her, and she earned the respect of her people through an ironclad adherence to an ideal.”

What will audiences take away from BSFOC’s telling of the story? Why does it need to be (re)told?

“As a producer/director, the main question I want to ask of the work is why Dido dies. That’s what’s ultimately led me personally to the staging we’re about to present here. I don’t believe that people die of a broken heart, unless they have some kind of congenital heart defect, and I don’t believe that the queen of Carthage has the kind of emotional pallor that lends itself to dying of a hissy fit after the bloke you’ve known for a couple of days decides it’s time to move on. I want there to be a driving force behind it. I want to know what it is about the witches that gives them such power over Dido.

“People who aren’t familiar with classical mythology, and the Aeneid in particular, aren’t all that likely to know much about Dido, and you’re certainly not going to learn anything about her from the text of Purcell’s opera. Our telling of the story – the recasting of the witches as the shadow selves of the named characters – is intended to help to fill in the blanks. Nahum Tate (librettist)’s Dido is not controlling, masochistic, or even particularly bold, and that is why Dido’s shadow self – and, by extension, the witches – have so much power. The impulse is there, and is all the more irresistible for going unrecognised.

“I want to retell Dido and Aeneas because I love Dido and I can’t stand Aeneas. If you take Tate’s text by itself, she’s nothing but a puppet at his mercy, and I don’t want that for her. I want her to have agency, even if it’s an agency that no-one can quite understand. And I want him to look like a tool, because he is.”

Imagine I know nothing about opera and classical literature. What background knowledge do I need to acquire to appreciate what you’re doing with this production? Is it reasonable to assume the audiences won’t know much either? How will you help them into the opera?

“Basically, I would like to transmit the idea that Dido’s story runs deeper than the text of the opera implies. I think we’re helping the audience along there with the addition of newspapers, which help to flesh out what might be going on beyond the confines of Dido’s palace and what kind of impact her dalliances might be having outside. In the mythology, Dido is a really great ruler who is essentially completely derailed by Aeneas’ arrival on the scene. I want the audience to get a sense of that.

“I also want to transmit the idea that Dido’s death, to me, seems impossible without the impulse towards self-destruction.

“I think – or, at least, I hope – that this production will be reasonably accessible to people who have neither a classical music nor classical historical background, and I’d be interested to hear what needs to be drawn out of the narrative and the staging to make it so.”

You want to take your production to schools/colleges. What do you hope to teach young people about? Opera? Feminism? Purcell’s era? Classical lit? Tropes?

“A variety of things. I’d like to teach everyone in a school – meaning also the staff – how you can adapt a work like Dido and Aeneas to be performable by small forces, because I think that’s one of our major achievements with it. I want to teach performers how to be creative with limited resources, and to encourage them to think about alternative readings.

“I want to teach people to sing, and not to be afraid of singing. That would be a unifying motivation in any educational work I do with Better Strangers.

“Back when I was doing GCSEs, Dido’s Lament came up as a regularly used example of how melody + basso continuo worked, so I think it could be a great set of lessons to people aged 13+ of how Purcell’s music was constructed and how his melodies, instrumentation and word-setting were put together. I think it would be more fun and probably more instructive for people to do this/see it done in performance.

“And, yes, I’d like to use it as an opportunity to teach story-makers of the future that they might want to think about why, precisely, they want to kill off their lead [insert kyriarchal minority here] character rather than resolve the plot some other way.”

• Ah, Forget My Fate Part II: Dido and Aeneas at the King’s Head Theatre, 26 July 2012. Book tickets here. Read more about the show’s development on the BSFOC blog.

Have you ever seen those videos of Harry Potter fans in Japan? Go and YouTube some now. Okay. I’m like that, but with Jacobean revenge tragedies. I will camp out on the internet and snipe front row tickets and then work seventy hours of overtime to afford them. I will sob behind my fingers and moan, “Their love is so real” to myself as characters stab each other up on stage. I will embarrass the actors and everyone around me by simultaneously crying and cheering during the applause at the end. I’m getting a tattoo of one of the stage directions from John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore, for crying out loud. A tattoo. This is a Thing for me. I’d reblog gifs all over Tumblr for The Changeling and Edward II if such gifs existed.

But they don’t, because it’s just me.

I get away with writing flailing fanboyish nonsense for my film reviews, but I don’t know how far I’ll get away with it for this. Let’s see.

What it is, is that I went to see Cheek By Jowl’s new production of the aforementioned ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore at the Cambridge Arts Theatre last week. It’s a modern dress production, featuring a single, static set, a nearly omnipresent ensemble cast, and modern dance. Oh, and lots and lots of sex and violence. It’s directed by Declan Donnellan, who took a modern dress production around London in the ’80s, and this is his new version that’s doing a big tour around France and the Sydney Festival, before coming to roost in London’s Barbican Centre in the near future.

Before I trundle on in my usual obtuse fashion, let me outline the plot of ‘Tis Pity for you, in case you don’t know it. Once upon a time in Parma, Giovanni falls in love with his sister Annabella. It’s requited and consensual and they carry on in secret for some time. Annabella is, unfortunately, being courted by sixty zillion guys other than her brother, and her father’s all, “please marry someone because your brother’s a bit useless, ps. don’t marry your brother lol”. It’s all okay and she can put off marriage virtually indefinitely, which is relevant to her interests because she’s in a very nice relationship with Giovanni, ta very much AND THEN SHE BECOMES THE PREGNANT and GUESS WHAT it’s obviously her brother’s. So, in order to divert the dreadful shame of being pregnant out of wedlock, she marries Suitor #1, Soranzo, who is not a very nice man (with previous abusive history) and who has an even worse manservant called Vasques, who likes to shiv people. Soranzo finds out Annabella’s pregnant, Vasques does some Sherlocking and finds out it’s Giovanni’s, and Giovanni, with time-honoured 24-carat flawless logic, decides to avert the on-coming crisis by killing Annabella, ripping out her heart, and taking the heart to a party. Then, everyone dies.

It’s the best play.

I was amazed at the audience, first. It was all – ALL – middle class couples about twice my age! They didn’t look as though they were there for the same reasons I was, to put it tactfully. I felt decidedly shifty in my spiked collar and skinny jeans, with my boyfriend and my ‘hawk haircut. Aside from the central relationship, I was looking forward to seeing how homoerotic this production had made Vasques’s relationship with his master, Soranzo. And, yes, I wanted to see squirting blood and eye-gouging. That’s what I was there for, and I clutched my Feelings Scarf (the stripy scarf I take to every film or play I see so that I can cuddle it and cry into it; I am ridiculous) and was essentially self conscious right up until Annabella (Lydia Wilson) came on stage.

As soon as she emerged, I lost my comparing-myself-to-the-audience anxiety completely. With ‘Tis Pity, I’m used to Annabella being painted as this passive recipient of Giovanni’s (Jack Gordon) affections. She is tossed about between her suitors and her brother, and it’s never really clear what she wants because you only ever see her through the lens of the men and their desires – so she’s this unattainable, Madonna/whore figure that I’d never really felt I could connect with.

Not this Annabella! Nope. She’s a tiny, scrappy waif with a half-shaved head and tangled hair, adjusting her laptop with her feet so that she can watch a film with her headphones on. Her bedroom – the set where the whole thing takes place – is adorned with posters for True Blood and Dial M For Murder, absinthe and The Vampire Diaries. She has tattoos and scruffy sneakers. Just visually, I found her easy to bond with: like someone I could have met in the pub. “Shame, though,” I thought, watching her bounce about on her bed, waiting for the lights to drop and the play to properly start, “that the play is mostly from Giovanni’s perspective.”

While that’s textually true, it certainly wasn’t the case for this production, which literally revolves around Annabella. She’s practically on stage all the time, even when she’s not participating in a scene. She’s picked up and hoisted about. She leads the dance numbers. She gets dressed up as a Madonna, complete with lit-up fairylight halo. She has all these extra actions and reactions, and when she speaks, she speaks… clearly. She fights back when Soranzo (Jack Hawkins) hits her. Her decisions about herself and her love life are clearly made, physically and verbally, and she makes her mind explicit. I was, frankly, amazed, having never really seen Annabella performed with this kind of clarity and sympathy before. I’m normally a Giovanni kind of guy – I always read him as this obsessive, devoted, atheist whose life is ruined by his social context and coercively-assigned religion, but Donnellan’s staging gives Annabella such agency that watching it, I found my allegience changed.

Soranzo, Annabella’s abusive suitor, whom she marries in haste to cover her pregnancy, was also painted rather more sympathetically than usual, which I found problematic. Yes, I know it’s boring and tedious to have Soranzo just be this using, bastardous wanker with no other dimensions at all, but, for the love of god, he hits her! He hits her and draws blood! He beats her and fetches a coathanger as if to forcibly abort her pregnancy! Come on! And then, we get this bizarre little insertion of tenderness where he buys her baby clothes and they look at them together and he’s sweet and tender, and you can see she’s changing her mind about him, and that’s not in the text, that’s been deliberately added – but why? Tell me I’m not the only one to find that intensely fucking awkward. I mentioned the coathanger, right?

As you can imagine, this production isn’t going to be easy viewing for everyone. It never is. It’s ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore. It’s a sympathetic play about incest that features heavy violence. This, however, is a marvellously hard-hitting, sensuous, lush performance all lit in red and green, which makes the action simultaneously really gory and really… I don’t know, tactile? (Men get their shirts off a lot and touch each other. I was a bit overwhelmed. You gotta understand.)

Oh, wait, wait, one other thing: Vasques (Laurence Spellman). In the text, Vasques is pretty much uniformly a Super Bastard. He double-crosses everyone, faithful only to his master – also a bastard – and doesn’t hesitate to seduce and murder his way around the cast, eventually to gloat over how he, as a Spaniard, has outdone the Italians in revenge. And in this production, he’s amazingly likeable! I mean, he’s still a double-crossing, seducing bastard, but he has vulnerability and passion. He folds Soranzo up in his arms and cuddles him. (Oh, and he also has a male stripper bite out the comic relief character’s tongue on stage. He caresses and kisses said stripper while he does it.)

Ford should have called this play Sex and Violence and Incest Party in Parma, Wooooo, and I think Donnellan’s production certainly does the text justice. There’s a lot of bodily fluids either visible or implied (at one point Vasques visibly orgasms whilst licking someone’s shoes, for example) and the whole thing is amazingly visceral to an extent where audience members were cringing and gasping around me. Religion seeps through the action to a huge extent, as is only proper – there’s veils and rosaries aplenty, and a bleeding-heart Jesus on the wall. You end up feeling that, were it not for a societal damnation of incest and premarital sex, Giovanni and boisterous, playful Annabella would be happy together; their separation through the external (ecclesiastical) pressures on her to marry is heartbreakingly, agonisingly painful.

Oh, and there’s a dancing cardinal.

If you have the means and time to go and see this production, I cannot recommend it highly enough. You won’t see anything else like it, and ‘Tis Pity is performed so rarely (probably due to the content!) that when a company does do it, it’s because they really relish it, and it shows. It really shows.

SUFFICE TO SAY, my Feelings Scarf got a good wringing.

• ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore hits London’s Barbican Centre from 16 Feb-22 March 2012. For the full tour, click here.

Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies

This exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery looks at the moment immediately after Charles II reversed this rule, and it’s a fun little look at some portraits, caricatures and paraphernalia of women who were allowed on stage, ‘from Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons’. It’s focused on portraits, but there are some super little earthenware tiles with different actresses on them in Room 3. There’s also a facsimile of the Yellow Pages-style brothel directory, Harris’ List of Covent Garden Ladies; or, The Man of Pleasure’s Kalendar, illustrating the fall from grace of the once ‘Convent and Garden’ of Westminster Abbey – a bit too close to eighteenth-century Theatreland for PR-comfort. Since its reissue by the History Press this book has now achieved some cult status – the guy next to me, looking at it, said to his companion, ‘You know, Gladys: Harris’ List – that’s the one we’ve got in the toilet’.

Nell (c.1651-87) opens this exhibition – a talented comic actress, although she is popularly most recognised for inspiring Charles II’s last words ‘Let not poor Nelly starve’ (she survived him by barely a year, fact fans). There are two portraits of her here, in both of which she’s got her mammaries out. This exhibition would have these as evidence of her ‘skillful manipulation’ rather than ‘brazen hussydom’; the second portrait shows her naked to the waist and looking directly at the viewer with a gaze at once languid and challenging. You might be reminded of Manet’s Olympia, condemned as ‘vulgar’ and ‘immoral’ on its first exhibition at 1863, mainly because the nude is looking directly at the viewer rather than obligingly turning her head away for better ogling comfort. And indeed, such a tension between looking and being looked at probably underscored a lot of the moral uncertainty about the early actresses.

Later on, we get Sarah Siddons (1755-1831), powerful, tragic grande dame. She appears in Room 3 painted by Thomas Lawrence as public intellectual, tutor to the royal children – and at a vantage point that forces us to look up at her imperious face, rather than to avert our eyes from her naked bosom. This is hung alongside a number of grandiose actress-as-Muse paintings, large as their themes, and also including Muses of Comedy and society amateurs like Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.

But even in the late eighteenth century ‘actress’ still wasn’t a career you’d want for your wife. Thespiennes like Elizabeth Ann Sheridan (1754-1792) and Elizabeth Farren (1759-1829) – both exhibited here – gave up their acting careers, on request, upon marriage. While the eighteenth-century gentleman was not renowned for being into female careers in general, the issue here seems to be more ‘other men looking at your wife’ than anything else: after all, these men were ‘forward thinking’ enough to marry an actress in the first place. Perhaps they were nervous of the number of early actresses, like Nell, who had affairs with kings and nobles. If so, they had a good few hundred years of uncertainty left: Edward VII was still pretty into actresses at the turn of the twentieth century. ‘I’ve spent enough on you to build a battleship’ he complained to Lillie Langtry (1853-1929), eliciting the tart response ‘And you’ve spent enough in me to float one.’ (It may have been such impertinence that led to her replacement by another actress, Sarah Bernhardt, shortly afterwards.)

Dorothy Jordan in travesti - engraving after the John Hoppner painting in this exhibition

But, as this exhibition shows, one of the primary moral gripes with these early actresses was actually about something a bit unexpected: the travesti roles many of them built careers on. There are some fascinating visual representations in this exhibition of actresses – like Dorothy Jordan (1761-1816), whose bosom apparently ‘concealed everything but its own charms’ – in their famous ‘breech’ roles, both Shakespearean (stalwarts like Twelfth Night and As You Like It) and just… male (Tom Thumb). It seems that, after decades of young boys aping womanhood, the first actresses set themselves the challenge of continuing the noble tradition: it was conscious decision, rather than occasional dramatic necessity, for many of them to adopt the travesti.

The Immodesty here implied resulted in endless caricatures, many of which are exhibited here. My favourite was entitled ‘An Actress at her Toilet; or, Miss Brazen Just Breecht’ – though perhaps even stranger were the portraits of various male actors, including David Garrick, in drag – enormous hoop and all – as a kind of forerunner to the pantomime dame.

Take a feminist friend and thrash it out in the Portrait Gallery café with their superior yoghurt and granola, says this reviewer. And visit John Donne on the top floor, if he’s not gone into cleaning yet.

• The First Actresses runs at the National Portrait Gallery until 8 January 2012.

Here guest blogger Lydia continues yesterday’s interview about representations of women in horror, and what it’s been like resurrecting Grand Guignol for a modern audience…

So, we’ve just got done talking about the rise of the ‘saw a woman in half’ phenomenon – seems like there are both political  and practical reasons why horror can fall into misogyny. Is this stuff as common as people think?

Tom: There’s tons of it. Tons and tons. We choose not to put on plays like that as they don’t interest us, but in the 1940s and 50s when the Grand Guignol was trying to compete with Hammer, they wrote pure exploitation crap. It’s true of all kinds of horror: you can tell a form is dying when it spills out pure sexualised violence. It doesn’t take much money or skill to produce, but it sells, so the lower end of the horror market is flooded with this kind of thing.

Stew: The nadir of all creative horror genres, periods of productivity, and exciting works always end with women being hacked up. Bad horror tends towards unthinking misogyny and ultraviolence.

Tom: The Friday the 13th sequels, for example, are aimed at teenage boys who want to see tits and gore. It’s not that they’re interested in sexualised violence itself, or damaging women; in fact anything emotionally realistic would probably upset or disturb them – they just want as much sex and as much violence as possible within a given time span.

Stew: For those cynical sequel makers, women are just a convenient vessel for both tits and blood. A lot of the women being killed are topless or have recently been topless, or are even mid-coitus. We’re seeing it again now in the torture porn genre – a term people argue with, but I think it’s completely accurate. In Hostel for example, all we’re seeing is girls chosen for their looks being chopped up.

Tom: More than that – they’re being chopped up in such a way that it’s clear it’s supposed to be a turn-on. Because the films have decent production values, it’s harder to spot. The people producing this stuff are far more competent with a camera and effects than whatever clown the studios hired to make Friday the 13th part 8. So instead of being a sequence of disjointed tat, it lovingly focuses on the bodies, on the violence, in a style that is erotic in and of itself.

Stew: What we’re refuting here, and in our theatre, is that these stereotypes are intrinsic to horror. It’s a lot more interesting than that. Horror is what occurs at the negative extremity of human experience: the points at which we don’t understand something, can’t cope with something, or are driven to actions that are well outside the boundaries of normal behaviour. That covers everything from hauntings to murder and massacres, death, and losing your mind. Anything that we are not fit to cope with can produce horror. It can go as far as Lovecraft and involve gods from beyond time, or it can be a woman killing her child. Violence can be a part of it, but it’s not necessary.

Tom: You can have extreme violence without horror. There are places the two cross over. You could have a legitimate discussion about whether, say, Rambo is a horror film, because it is undoubtedly a film that sets out to be horrific.

Stew: And then there are films which use the tropes of horror but are not horror. Shaun of the Dead is very gory, and terrible things happen, but really it’s not a horror film because it doesn’t exist to horrify.

Tom: There are a lot of horror comedies where horror provides a kind of desktop theme – the styles and shapes, but not the core. And then you have true horror comedies like Drag Me To Hell and almost all of Sam Raimi’s films: genuinely scary, genuinely unnerving and deeply funny.

Those cross-genre films are often the ones that freak me out the most – you get more involved and don’t know what to expect or what’s expected of you.

Tom: Grand Guignol scripts often work towards implicating an audience and making it disgusted with itself – it works you up so that you’re desperate for the payoff, so you want to see mayhem; you want to see everything destroyed. It reveals a lot about people and it’s fascinating, but you have to be careful not to be merely titillating – if they’re never revolted by it then they’ll never really face the facet of themselves that wanted it. When it’s successful, it exposes some fucked up inner feelings buried in the audience’s subconscious and assumptions.

So that old helpless innocent woman trope shows what people want in gender relations?

Tom: I think that’s actually become rather dated. It was never important that she was innocent, more that she was sympathetic. Back in 1890, even 1950, that meant virginal and naïve. That was the woman men wanted to be with and male writers thought women wanted to be. But those same cynical reasons are why in more modern stuff – not just horror – female characters are becoming more sophisticated, interesting and independent. It just reflects the kind of person the majority of men want to be with.

Cynical, but it rings true. What do these tropes say about men?

Tom: Men seem to be pretty blasé about male characters in horror. They just want them to die
interestingly. Unless it’s the killer, and even then, it’s just hoping for more killing.

Stew: There are very few strong male heroes in horror. Maybe Ash, but he’s a buffoon who happens to save the day. Shaun, in Shaun of the Dead, has toughness about him, but again is buffoonish. There aren’t a lot of great male characters running around in horror as a contrast for the problems with women.

Tom: A lot of men die too, it’s just that their deaths aren’t lingered over. In horror films where there’s a long series of victims being killed off sequentially, perhaps the numbers will be split equally male/female, but the last one is almost always a young woman.

Stew: She has survived to the end because she displayed a level of ingenuity that the others – male and female – were incapable of. It harks back to the resourceful gothic heroine.

Tom: So now we have a combination of factors: women are more likely to sympathise with a resourceful, interesting woman, and men are more likely to feel emotional involvement and protectiveness towards a young, attractive, likeable female character. It lacks subtlety, but for a form which doesn’t focus on character development it often turns out like that.

I see an interesting link to the politics of violence, and in particular sexual violence. There’s still a deeply entrenched assumption that male victims should somehow have been able to fight off their attacker; by being defeated you have been proved not to be a proper man, whatever that means. And the shame related to that can be felt to be worse than the crime itself.

Stew: Well, the killers in cheap slasher films, after hacking up topless women, will taunt male victims about their lack of manliness. Freddie and Chucky will always make wisecracks concerning the masculinity of their male victims. They bully and humiliate them before killing them. And then Jason, who has a hockey mask, massive weapon and is all muscles: he’s kind of an ur-male; masculinity pushed to a horrific extreme.

Tom: Of course, this is in slashers, one of the lowest forms of horror; it doesn’t really go anywhere interesting with those ideas.

It’s kind of interesting that even in it’s most simplistic form, people are so addicted to these ideas – the miseryporn biography stories about horrific child abuse that my elderly female relatives are addicted to have so many of the same tropes.

Tom: I think it’s an urge that is common, if not to everyone, then to the vast majority of people, to vicariously experience the negative extremes of human possibilities. To understand somehow what that feels like. The forms in which people enjoy or find it acceptable to explore that differ, but it’s not exclusive to 16-24 year old men.

Lydia: So in fact we have ended up with several distinct things which go by the name ‘horror’. There’s the inherited tropes and structures – the kind of desktop theme that you describe horror comedies playing with, all capes and bats and fainting virgins. Then there’s the market – primarily made up of teenage boys – for unsophisticated tits and violence served up as concentrated as possible, so they sometimes end up overlapping and confused. And then, finally, we have various approaches to the exploration of the negative extremes of human experience. Since the latter plays on the audience’s deeply help assumptions and fears, in its weaker forms it can slip into mere titillation and reinforce stereotypes, but when elevated to an art from, it can shake and move you, reveal yourself to yourself.

Stew: And be fucking scary, yeah.

• Theatre of the Damned official website
• London Horror Festival official website
• @theatreofdamned

All images used with permission, copyright Theatre of the Damned, or under Fair Use guidelines