Touch // DryWrite

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.

- Rebecca West

In her new play Touch, Vicky Jones explores what the fruits of feminism are, and questions who has the real power in a relationship. Dee, a 33-year-old single woman, has left a failed relationship in Wales to establish herself and make a life in London. She tries to connect with herself and build meaningful connections through a variety of online dating sites, but each liaison widens the gap between her expectations and reality.

Dee confronts Miles, an older man who is part of a group involved with S&M, and argues that he is trying to make her weak. ‘It’s no fun for me if you are weak’ he responds, because that is the game. We pretend we are strong to be mastered by another. Although Dee talks as if she is in control of each relationship, she is actually a victim of what her partners want from her. Eddie, the first man we meet on stage, tells her that ‘there are woman out there who are doing better than you at being a woman. Who enjoy being a woman. And who have their fucking shit together’. But getting her shit together is the very reason Dee rented her tiny bedsit in London.

The big question becomes one of what being a woman is supposed to be in this liberal, forward-thinking twenty-first century. As Elf Lyons writes:

You can’t use multiple relationships to fill the void and give you the gratification that you should be able to give yourself. More love doesn’t mean better love. If you are dating multiple people in order to enhance your self-worth, you end up feeling like out-of-date hummus, feeling jealous anytime anyone chooses to spend time with anyone else, resulting in you treating your partners badly and without respect. 

And this is exactly what happens not just to Dee, but to far too many single thirty-something women, with their biological clock ticking, their hormones buzzing and constant reminders that they are not cohabiting, reproducing, or being what they thought they would be at this stage of their lives. 

Some of the confusion rests with the new generation of men who support the concepts of feminism and yet do not know what is expected of them as partners. As Mark White writes in Psychology Today 

It is difficult for men, especially those of us who appreciate and embrace the importance of being respectful and considerate toward women, to balance those attitudes with the animalistic, non-rational expressions of passion and desire that women want from us.

That is the dilemma faced by singles today. We have commercialized sex to the point where partners are touted as objects to shop for on sites like Tinder or in pornography for momentary excitement and passion, but when it comes to the long haul we are at a loss. No one knows how to react. Just where is the line between subservience and co-operation, dominance and abusive control? 

-       Lynn Ruth Miller

Touch is at the Soho Theatre, London until August 26th 2017. A new production of DryWrite's  Fleabag is at Underbelly, George Square during the Fringe from 21st-27th August.

 

Links relevant to this diagnosis:

Touch - Soho Theatre

Fleabag - Underbelly George Square

Why Men Find It So Hard to Understand What Women Want - Psychology Today

Women’s Attitudes Toward Sex - Huffington Post

Has Feminism Worked? - Telegraph

Elf Lyons - Polyamory: A New Way to Love

JOAN // Milk Presents

In ‘Mind, Modernity and Madness’, Liah Greenfeld writes that “A widely held idea (say, that hell awaits those who eat flesh on Fridays, or that all men are created equal) is no less a reality for people in the community holding the idea than the Atlantic Ocean”. Her bracingly forthright sociological study goes on to dismiss those who “diagnose entire cultures as psychotic...retroactively pronounce medieval saints schizophrenics”.

It’s a helpful thought to bear in mind when hearing the story of Joan of Arc. It’s a historical fact that a teenage peasant girl with no military background presided over a period of astonishing success for the French army in the 13th century -- while claiming to be taking directions from God. Accounts of the time stress her femininity, purity and delicacy, as a holy maiden who was literally heaven sent.

Lucy J. Skilbeck’s play makes her something a little tougher. Where medieval commentators were keen to emphasise that she only dressed as a man to preserve her chastity and safety, drag king LoUis CYfer embraces the masculinity of a woman who charged into battle in a specially made suit of armour.

Skilbeck’s focus on gender identity shows the power of religious zeal to overcome other culturally ingrained ideas, like the need for women to be meek and submissive. Medieval saints could (often literally) float over gender norms by dint of divine intervention. But medieval ideas on gender were also surprisingly modern: themes of gender transformation fill romances, while scientists believed that physical exercise, sexual desire or even just excessive heat could transform women into men. Skilbeck’s approach makes Joan’s approach both natural and deliberate: a series of tiny decisions, as well as one broad ecstatic creation. CYfer is an acclaimed performer on the drag cabaret scene, and this experience shows in a brilliant observed set of comic songs and physical performances. CYfer parodies all kinds of men, from a gruff father to a camp priest, and borrows their mannerisms: their self-consciousness heightened by the mirrors that surround the stage.

Joan becomes the world’s first drag king, a joyful anachronism heightened by CYfer’s Tank Girl t-shirt and 21st century song choices. Skilbeck’s story sticks close to its medieval source too, though, spelling out the painful details of victory in battle, then backlash from the religious establishment. In medieval times, as now, the freedom to step outside prescribed female roles is dependent on cultural mood. And when the mass shared belief in Joan’s divinity fades, so does Joan’s ability to perform a gender that’s artificial and hugely natural, at once.

- AS

Joan was on at Underbelly at Edinburgh Fringe, 5-28th August https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/joan

‘Mind, Modernity and Madness’ by Liah Greenfeld https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Le4anj8kJPkC&dq=medieval+saints+psychosis

Ideas of gender transformation in medieval fiction http://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1813&context=mff

TWO MAN SHOW // RashDash

There is a crisis in masculinity. Men can no longer be bearded, belching monsters, retreating to their man-caves at the merest whiff of emotion. Women are in charge now, and men now have to stop solving problems with their fists. They have talk to each other. They have to have feelings, damn it. This is the initial premise of Two Man Show – actually a three-woman piece. But, just as the title of the show misleads us as to the gender identities of the performers, the show itself tells us less about what it is to be a 21st century man, and more about what it is to be a woman.
 
Following a quick overview of how the patriarchy has ruined everything, we see women portrayed as goddesses, as muses, on pedestals, as voiceless figurines. We see women acting out the characters of two brothers, struggling to communicate about death and impending fatherhood, jaws and hearts hardened and set against each other.
 
Most of the show involves the two main performers and creators – Helen Goalen and Abbi Greenland – either topless or completely naked. It seems potentially gratuitous, titillating or desensitising. Then as women playing men, standing about in their boxer shorts in the morning, it seems fine. After all, men are allowed to walk around in just their pants, aren’t they?
 
It’s not the only ‘un-ladylike’ behaviour the audience is asked to confront. Women swear. We fight. We fuck. We make our own rules. We rule our own lives now, thank you very much. But does this mean we’re no longer allowed to be feminine? To use our power softly rather than screaming and shouting? Two Man Show speaks to the very heart of identity yet acknowledges that sometimes there are no words to say how we really feel.

- Dr Kat Arney

Two Man Show ran at Summerhall until August 27th - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/two-man-show

RashDash: http://www.rashdash.co.uk/

Thoughts from RashDash about on-stage nudity and playing men: http://www.rashdash.co.uk/thoughts/two-man-show-week-four-diary/

Time – The Crisis in Masculinity: http://time.com/4339209/masculinity-crisis/

Ms Magazine – Empowering Femininity: http://msmagazine.com/blog/2014/07/28/empowering-femininity/