Not Fabulous
"I wear the boy they gave me no more" Lucas Lopes
Femininity as performed and embodied by male assigned individuals is often celebrated and adored in a show context. They are deemed powerful and beautiful and fabulous, as long as they are on stage. But what about the moments before and after the show? What can consciously chosen and performed femininity look like, what shape can it take when the goal is not to entertain? (it is and is not). In this piece the three performers physically explore questions and notions of community, shame, desire and isolation, and invite the audience to take part in this journey.
Devised physical theatre piece. Directed by Ottoline. Performed by Kah Chun Pau, Lucas Lopes, Igor Meneses. Costumes by Harrison Rodrigues. Music by Igor Meneses. Developed at Folkwang University of Arts in May 2018, performed in Essen, Cologne (Villa Concha Queer Performance Night), Bochum (Beyond Binary festival Atelier Automatique).
Femme Cyborg
“The cyborg skips the step of original unity, of identification with nature in the Western sense. It is a hybrid of machine and organism. Cyborg imagery can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves. It is an imagination of both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, relationships, space, stories.
Though both are bound in the spiral dance, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess.”
Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Harraway 1991
This piece, inspired by Harraway's Cyborg Manifesto and a personal critique on essentialist discourse, explores the space after failure, after failure to become, to assimilate. Juxtaposed to flashing images of Kate Bush as a symbolic goddess, this cyborg attempts to move and be moved in ways that conform to the norms of heteronormative femininity.
Created and performed by Ottoline. Created at Folkwang University of Arts November 2017. Performed in Essen and Berlin (Theater Verlängertes Wohnzimmer).