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Women asked to strip... for feminism
20.11.09
Women courageous enough to strip for feminism are being asked to audition for the London run of a hit show from this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Director/performer Nic Green is hoping that at least 50 women will volunteer to appear in her production, Trilogy, which will be seen at the Battersea Arts Centre and then the Barbican in January.
They have to be willing to get naked to perform a choreographed dance which forms the opening 15-minute sequence of the trilogy, exploring women's relationship with their bodies.
They then get to watch the rest of the show which goes on to recreate a famous moment in the war of the sexes when Norman Mailer, the almost arrogantly masculine writer, discussed women's liberation with a panel of feminists including Germaine Greer in New York City Town Hall in 1971.
The workconcludes with another participatory segment where even men in the audience get a chance to take part.
Ms Green, 27, from Glasgow, said the piece was “an interrogation of modern-day feminism and what it means to be a woman”.
More specifically, she said the mass volunteer dance was “about celebrating the diversity and differences between the women” who take part.
The volunteers will need to be available to rehearse in advance althought the production will try to accommodate willing participants who cannot make all the performances.
The show won one of the Edinburgh Fringe's top awards, a Herald Angel, and a string of five-star reviews. It was described as “life-changing” and “joyous” by The Guardian and “a life-affirming investigation of contemporary womanhood” by Metro.
But some male critics were less convinced. Robert Dawson-Scott in The Times said as the father of three daughters, he supported the feminist cause. “But is taking all your clothes off and singing Jerusalem, which is what the show recommends as a way forward... really going to cut it?”
At the Barbican, where the work is part of the Bite theatre festival, it will be accompanied by a screening of D A Pennebaker's film, Town Bloody Hall, which recorded the New York debate with Mailer.
Anyone wanting to join Ms Green in nudity is asked to email sallyr@bac.org.uk or call 020 7326 8260. www.bac.org.uk, www.barbican.org.uk.
