Theatre – Victoria Firth

Knowing when to stop

5th September 2022

In 2018 I made an autobiographical one woman show called ‘How to be amazingly happy!’. It looked at identity and reinvention through the lens of not having children. It’s personal, intimate and increasingly has enabled me to platform issues around childlessness.

But when you have a successful show how do you know when to stop doing it?

As a piece of theatre, ‘How to be amazingly happy!’ has done well – a successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe, tour dates all around the country and still in demand. It’s been a great ‘bread and butter’ show, flexible to tour, manageable to self-produce and, when making new work has been frustrated by the pandemic, it’s been a valuable way for me to stay feeling like a performer and connecting with audiences. It makes a lot of sense to keep projects like this ‘in repertoire’ – but for how long? There are particular things to consider when the work is auto-biographical or trauma informed.

First, the material dates. Not necessarily in its relevance to the audience but to the experience of the artist. It’s a true life drama but only at that moment in time, and life moves on. Relationships change and loved ones come and go. Performance skills mean things can be compellingly recreated and shows can be re-written but there’s a heartfelt balance in maintaining the integrity of the narrative alongside being oneself on stage when big things you’re talking about have changed. I experimented with replacing a monologue about a relationship, included to represent new beginnings when it actually ended very badly, but it just wasn’t as good. I spent a whole day of rehearsal angsting whether to change the word ‘is’ to ‘was’ in a sentence about my mum after she died. Narratively it would be an imperceptible change but the experience of performing it very different.

There are other ethical considerations that come up as auto-biographical shows age. In a piece that is largely direct address, talking to the audience as ‘myself’, about visceral life moments, deliberately invites connection. But the audience experienc of live performance is in real time and in post show talks and surrounding conversations I don’t want to disrupt that relationship, or burst the world of the play, by no longer being the me they just met. Of course everything in the show is still true but in a production which attempts to bring honesty, to subjects often not talked about, I’m concerned with maintaining my authenticity and honouring shared vulnerabilty. And what if I’ve changed my mind about something?

This brings me to my next point which is about the paradox of working from difficult personal experience. It’s so powerful to bring a story into the light to say ‘I stand for this’ or ‘This has happened to me, so maybe to you, or people you know’. So is the challenge, healing and joy of art. But how is the artist’s recovery from a trauma affected by both their sharing of it and the process of continually re-inhabiting it on demand? How do they get to outgrow it?

My own experience was that it was fearfully hard at first to disclose something I’d kept private, then it was unintentionally and wonderfully cathartic. As with most trauma, shame is an underlying problem and being increasingly open has enabled me to assimilate my experience in ways I never imagined, as well as to meet and talk to amazing people. Now as time goes on it feels important that new things can happen and old experiences can be redefined in a bigger context. There are other things to say, do and be known for. With auto-biographical work though you are permanently linked to the material. You can’t just take your token back to the cloakroom and get your coat of anonymity back. Labels about issues and identity can’t only be worn in front of the people you feel safe with – they’ll be marketed to everyone and this complicity with the content of the show is reinforced with every repeat performance.

I was really taken by an exchange with artist @nathanieljhall, when he finished performing the auto-biographical show ‘First Time’ which tells his story of contracting HIV. He said that right from the beginning, because it was a trauma informed work, he only ever planned to perform two tours. When COVID affected that boundary he made a new one of a set number of shows – so he always had an end point in sight. That struck me as a very sound plan. I never set a cap but I remembered that my ambition for ‘How to be amazingly happy!’ was to do 50 performances. Adding up the stats when writing this article I was delighted to find that my next show will be my 50th!

So, with all this in mind I’ve decided that, to the best of my knowledge, the performance of ‘How to be amazingly happy!’ this Saturday at @StoryhouseLive in Chester will be my last one. I can hang up my costume in the knowledge that I’ve done what I set out to do and done my bit in creative service to issues that have come to matter so much to me and many others. It feels fitting that it will be part of a whole day of events exploring the experience of people who don’t have children due to choice, or not by choice, or both.

It also feels good to pass the baton. Stories will always need re-telling and I’ve recently met Deborah Pakkar-Hull (@otherhoodarts) who’s researching a new play ‘Otherhood’ about people’s experience of not being a parent.

I’m so grateful to ‘How to be amazingly happy!’ for all it’s brought me personally and professionally. In the same way as we are all a product of our experiences, I have no doubt it will continue to inform me as a person and as an artist. Perhaps the material of the live performance will evolve into another format, maybe there will be a follow up show. Time will tell, but with autobiographical work, whatever I make in future will inevitably be a story of what happened next. This is definitely ‘An End’ rather than ‘The End’.

To everyone who has been a part of, supported, or shared the story – sincerely thank you x

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Pushing Butter – The Collection

31st March 2022

This is a collection of five blogs I wrote while re-making my live art performance THE BUTTER PIECE. My writing is joined by five pieces from other artists whose work involves, or is about, the body. It’s an insight into the artistic process but also a reflection on themes that come up from living in our skin – being seen, looking and being looked at, queerness, shame, ageing, change and materiality.

You can read the collection on ISSUU HERE

Or download it below:

Pushing-Butter Download

The guest writers are: Orrow Amy Bell, Jade Blackstock, Gillian Dyson, Ursula Martinez & Holly Revell. It was edited by Jodean Sumner and features drawings by Gillian and photographs from Coralie Datta and Matt Rogers.

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Pushing Butter #5 of 5 – The material facts

This is one of a series of writings that reflect on my journey toward re-making a performance art work called ‘The Butter Piece’. I first made it in 2011 and I’m revisiting it now a decade later.

‘The Butter Piece’ was shown live at CLAY, Leeds on the 26th November and Colchester Arts Centre on the 1st December. More details here.

08 December 2021

The most difficult part is the beginning.
Removing the dress.
There’s no way to take your clothes off that doesn’t smack of taking your clothes off
-and all that that denotes
I’m naked in it

And the butter starts hard.
As I ease up to it, it doesn’t respond easily
I have to give it my sure, smooth, slow movement.
And it responds by leaving oiliness up and around the spaces 
- places you aren’t supposed to be aware of in company

It feels shameful.
Smeary 
Like accidents and ignorance 
Secretive - derived from 
Secretions
Judgement
I feel hot.
The outer surfaces of my skin tighten against the gaze of the audience.

Later is better.

The social context slips away and naked is the new normal.
Anxious tension gives way to pleasure as
The butter gives me it’s soft, smooth, slow movement.
And I slide into it like a warm bath 
- and play.
We make long slides
short shunts
We can do what we like..... 

The end is a different kind of daring.

Clothes on, or off, doesn’t really matter because we have arrived
Exposure has melted into power
The risk is only falling
free falling
and free standing.

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Pushing Butter #4 of 5 – Shame & Safety

‘The Butter Piece’ will be shown live at CLAY, Leeds on the 26th November and Colchester Arts Centre on the 1st December. More details here http://www.victoriafirth.co.uk/the-butter-piece-2021/

01 December 2021

I made The Butter Piece because I wanted to confront SHAME.

We don’t talk about how we get to know our bodies as children, about masturbation, about wetness, very little about periods.

I spent a long time thinking my body, how I wanted to explore it and the responses it made, or didn’t, were wrong.

Rude

Messy

Leaky

Dirty

Shameful.

I thought I needed to close up and cover up.

I think this got in the way of my sexual potential as an adult.

Of my pleasure and my presence in my own body and my intimacy with others.

I eventually found a kind of sensual emancipation, probably around the time I made this piece, but personal journeys don’t just stop at the good bits.

My body continues to change and have new experiences – many of which are similarly not talked about and fester as a result.

I wonder what the opposite of shame might be…

I’ve decided on safety.

I realise that for me, it’s the security of trust with another, social validation in community and plain old information that have allowed me to right myself.

To risk being seen.

To revel in being felt.

To uncover

Open…….

Want.

In order to eradicate shame, inhabit my body and pursue pleasure I first need to feel safe. Safe from embarrassment, judgement, ridicule, betrayal, blame. It’s emotional safety.

-If you believe women’s bodies are precious and sacred as I do, then maybe it’s a kind of spiritual safety.

And as I write this I am mindful that, before any of that, there’s the need to be safe from harm. A physical and sexual respect that should be beyond the need to ask for it. Yet one that has not been, and is still not, afforded to so many women.

We need less shame.

We need more safety.

SAFE is the baseline.

_{Photo credit @CoralieDatta}

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Pushing Butter #3 of 5 – Queer Considerations

‘The Butter Piece’ will be shown live at CLAY, Leeds on the 26th November and Colchester Arts Centre on the 1st December. More details here http://www.victoriafirth.co.uk/the-butter-piece-2021/

22 November 2021

Someone asked me if The Butter Piece was a queer work and I didn’t know what to answer. So I started thinking about the queer work I see, and the notion of ‘the queer body’ and I still don’t know what to answer.

I do use the term ‘queer’ to describe myself and I made The Butter Piece so that might make it queer by default. I’m also an artist but I am not sure everything I make is art – although it is when I intend it.

How do being and doing relate?

Sometimes I think my very identity is an action and vice versa. Sometimes it’s totally irrelevant, or I want it to be, to ensure no-one feels the work isn’t for them. But I also want to make it for some people in particular, and I want them to know it.

I made this first and foremost for women. The Butter Piece was definitely intended as a feminist action – my queer identity wasn’t something I platformed back then. It is more visible and important to me now. I’m starting to realise I’m a bit of a late developer with both my art and my voice.

If I try and feel it out, queerness for me relates a lot to ‘otherness’ but in some contexts I have felt ‘other’ as a woman so it’s hard to separate out difference and discrimination purely on the basis of gender or sexuality.

I can say that being in physcially intimate relationships with women has been transformative to my sense of self and my self is what I use to make performance. Intimacy with another female body has been validating, healing, informative, joyful. It has enabled me.

There’s no overt queer content in this piece though. No words. Just what you see and hear and maybe smell. I find references that speak to the sense of my sexuality in that but I don’t know whether you will.

We could take queerness to mean radical, the transgressive, and by this definition The Butter Piece is a sure thing. Queer in provocation, by putting my female body on display with my own agency.

Is it transgressive to be an audience to such an act then? Is it radical to look? Does that make you queer for those moments? Are we all having a collective queer experience?

I don’t know, but it sounds like fun.

_{Photo credit @CoralieDatta}

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Pushing Butter #2 of 5 – My Mother’s Cellulite

‘The Butter Piece’ will be shown live at CLAY, Leeds on the 26th November and Colchester Arts Centre on the 1st December. More details here http://www.victoriafirth.co.uk/the-butter-piece-2021/

15 November 21

I mentally prepared before comparing pictures of me ten years ago and now.

It wasn’t enough.

I found it really difficult, especially looking at myself from the back – and I’d always considered my back one of my best features. I guess we look at our fronts more so the rear view image was more shocking.

I knew I would look older but I hadn’t thought about what ‘older’ translated to. It was less about wrinkles and more about shape. The shape of me is different in space – sturdier and more irregular. I have swellings and indentations in places that used to be smooth – hills and valleys instead of plains. Or perhaps it’s the same landscape after ecological change so the undulations and river beds have become more epic.

Weight is definitely a part of what I see, and I expected this, but what I find repulsive is where I have the heavy, dimply, ballast of my mum.

I have to do some work on this…

Why do I find features of my mother undesirable – is it because of her weight or her age?

Is it because of the relationship, her being my parent, or would it be the same with any older, or well upholstered, woman?

I think it is the relationship and lack of examples.

When I was a young the only women’s bodies I saw were those in magazines, TV and film or my mother. Such a fail-fail paradox. On one hand aspirational fantasies that I was physiologically programmed to never attain. On the other an inescapable destiny that I was desperate to individuate from. Where were the alternatives? Where were they then and where are they now?

As an adult I realise that my mum always looked great for her age. A certain amount of weight suited her and contributed to her youthfulness.

I believe I have become more attractive as I have gotten older. Or maybe I have shifted my parameters of beauty. My skin is increasingly porous. More of who I am comes through. The inner informing the outer instead of the other way around.

I look more like me and this ‘me’ is a product of my nature, my nurture and the congruence of myself.

_{Photo Credit @CoralieDatta}

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Pushing Butter #1 of 5 – Preparing the body

‘The Butter Piece’ will be shown live at CLAY, Leeds on the 26th November and Colchester Arts Centre on the 1st December. More details here http://www.victoriafirth.co.uk/the-butter-piece-2021/

8th November 2021

I’m getting ready

I’m getting ready to show my body to an audience

– and in this case naked.

In the same way I might prepare a costume, or set, lighting, other things the audience might see

I am preparing myself. I am preparing my body.

I want to say ‘This is not about bettering my body’ – but that position isn’t cut and dried.

In creating a physical performance I do need to be stronger, I will want to access the full range of my physical expression. I definitely think about the aesthetic of the figurative form, how I am using my instrument.

It is possible that being more active might change my shape.

I might lose weight.

But, I have to check this rationale isn’t being ridden by a desire to be more attractive in a socially prescribed way. To check that my preparation isn’t masking a desperate dieting, gyming, tumbling race to the finish line of the show – where I am thinner and beautifuller and all my ex-girlfriends and artistic rivals kick themselves.

My way through is to think about being embodied. Grounded – where the ground is an internal surface. A place where I fill my skin, I am the right size, I can stand up inside myself with all my physical and emotional material.

And so I am training.

I’m training by spending quality time with myself

– sometimes exercising, sometimes not.

I’m looking at pictures of myself

I’m moving around

I’m being tactile when I can and noticing space when I can’t.

I’m eating

I’m noticing what pleases my skin

I’m attentive to tiredness, tenderness

I’m taking up space.

I’m noticing when I feel uncomfortable and not making it comfortable

I’m noticing when I feel groovy and not pissing on my own cornflakes.

I’m not hiding.

To be intimate with a lover, a friend, an audience

– you first have to be intimate with yourself

And intimacy is about honesty, clarity, vulnerability.

So that’s what I’m really training.

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Gamekeeper turned Poacher (or maybe vice versa)

August 2018

This blog was first published in The Stage during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It refers to my time as Director of the Lawrence Batley Theatre (LBT) and returning to performing in middle age with my solo show ‘How to be amazingly happy!’.

Prior to beginning at LBT I had a career as an artist both directing and performing. It was why I got into theatre and the bedrock of my passion for it. I also think it’s why I’m good at my job. I think venues should be artist (or art) led and although I am known for being a ‘safe pair of hands’, when it comes to developing an organisation’s fortunes, I absolutely know this is because I manage the business end of things in tandem with my artistic sensibility. So although the role at LBT didn’t initially call for directing or producing it was important for me to find ways to hang on to my identity as an artist and to exercise my creativity.

First I did an MA in Ensemble Physical Theatre at the University of Huddersfield. Then I did a residency with Pacitti Company and went on to make some small live art pieces which included an appearance in the National Platform at the SPILL Festival – but over time the ability to hold back the tide of emails, policy demands, fundraising issues, local strategy group meetings and personnel needs, whilst trying to keep a work/life balance, becomes impossible to hold back. Now I basically have a desk job.

After 10 years in post it seemed important to claw back my sense of self as an artist and the pleasure and inspiration it gives me. But how? Where are the resources, the time to do it? What about conflict of interest, What about risk management? Solo work, self-produced with the support of other venues seemed the only way to go. The thought of stepping out as an unknown, emerging artist in middle age, whilst being a reasonably well known programmer, was terrifying – but I have had nothing but support and it’s important to say here it would also not have been possible without the commitment and vision of the LBT Board.

And so here I am in Edinburgh with my show. I don’t know yet how it will go, whether anyone will book it, but on some levels it doesn’t matter. I have already had a compelling insight into some of the challenges that artists are facing now, seen first-hand how the producing ecology and self-producing in particular, is working and have a much stronger idea of how LBT can help. I‘ve met countless new artists who have been generous with their time and I’ve remembered why I do this and that’s made me more playful, less tired and much clearer.

In short, it’s now more important than ever, that everyone working in the arts has opportunities to nourish their creativity, explore their passions and take risks. It has value and if we need to find new ways of working and shift perceptions in order to do it all the better – it’s the goose that lays the golden eggs.

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Inside Rehearsals…Week 5 of ‘Happy Days’

30 May 2018

This blog was first written for The Royal Exchange where I was participating in their ‘Observer Mondays’ scheme with Sarah Frankcom directing Samuel Beckett’s ‘Happy Days’. You can see the original post here:

https://www.royalexchange.co.uk/inside-rehearsals-week-5-of-happy-days

OBSERVATION ON REHEARSAL WEEK 5 OF 21 MAY 2018

HEAR WE ARE

I didn’t know that the name the company use for the theatre auditorium is the ‘module’ but it is and this week we are in it.

It’s exciting to see the set in situ inside the module but also, outside it in the royal exchange rear foyer, to see the workings of set and technical build exposed as things flow in and out of the space.

The technical time feels spacious and I learn that extra time was given for a diary commitment of one of the team which was then no longer needed – so now there is more time than usual, not just to work ‘cue to cue’ – going from one technical change to another but, to run whole sections of the piece and work on them in detail.

Despite the relaxed timings there is a palpable increase in tension as the first performance looms. Changes which might affect the delivery of the performance, queries about the workings of props feel more impactful than before and Sarah takes a reassuring and adaptive tone whilst solving practical problems.

The session works much like a rehearsal except now the actors are in full hair, make up and costume, on the real set and with the lighting and sound effects that will accompany their performance. It feels like everything has taken a big step forward since I was last here but it’s probably more the cumulative effect of everything Sarah has been planning all along coming together. The full creative team is here and Sarah confers with them between sections on how the vision is being realised.

THE SOUND OF SILENCE

I have never worked with a sound designer and it’s not something I would have thought about. I realise now my assumptions about sound were limited to music tracks and sound effects which are suggested by the text. Claire Windsor, the sound designer, appeared quietly in the rehearsal room last week and has been experimenting with sound during rehearsal. The result are injections of noise which form part of the design – creating an audio as well as visual landscape for the actors to inhabit. The set offers ‘maximum symmetry and simplicity’ as per Beckett’s notes and although there are no notes about sound, Claire has taken a similar approach. Atri, the Assistant Director, comments that, in this case, the sound does not prompt the audience what to feel but underscores the rhythm of the piece and offers punctuation to the text. I take this note into my directing toolkit. Sound can be story but it can also be dramaturgy and is part of the triangle of design – with setting and lighting. Chatting with Atri he also notes that Sarah works with good people who she trusts and I can see this in the way that she gives space for their talents to interpret her vision before crafting all the elements together.

This reminds me of advice from another director friend of mine who encouraged me to not always think I had to start small when wanting to make work. When the opportunity affords it – more creatives on a project give an emerging director more cover while they learn – delivering a frame of solid production values in which they can experiment.

TIME TO SING THE SONG NOW

My next visit will be to see the show. I can’t wait. Being able to see whole sections of it run means I know how arresting it will be. The shift between Act 1 and Act 2 is so striking I am moved to tears.

This would be called a ‘stripped back’ production except that was always how the writer intended it to be staged. It looks simple but there is so much artistry here. The sparseness of the action and design means that you live in all the small places of the actor’s performance. The detail is compelling and to watch these characters so intimately feels almost like an act of witnessing.

I think people will talk about this production for a long time. I encourage you to come and see it.

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Inside Rehearsals…Week 4 of ‘Happy Days’

23rd May 2018

https://www.royalexchange.co.uk/inside-rehearsals-week-4-of-happy-days

OBSERVATION ON REHEARSAL WEEK 4 OF 14 MAY 2018

ONE-ON-ONE CHAT WITH SARAH FRANKCOM

I’m fortunate to have a one to one chat with Sarah Frankcom where I can follow my curiosity about what is going on for her when she is directing and how she manages the process whilst leading a major regional theatre. It wasn’t an interview so these aren’t quotes from her but more what I took away from a very interesting chat.

Sarah manages her schedule by bookending her time with the actors. Either side they work with other members of the creative team working – the Assistant Director, Movement Director, line work, sometimes wardrobe fittings etc. This means that the production is progressing for a full day but she joins them from about 11am till 4pm. This allows her to take Royal Exchange meetings and deal with other business at the beginning and end of the day. She also sometimes takes meetings over the lunch break. This stops in the last week of rehearsal when Sarah brings her full focus to working on the production.

I asked Sarah how much research she does in preparation for a rehearsal. It seemed on day one a tremendous amount of thinking and working on the text had been done. Surprisingly Sarah says she does less now than ever before after consciously changing her practice a few years ago. She now has more confidence and trust about following what happens in the rehearsal room and making the work there rather than coming in to make a pre-set vision. As a result Sarah has the Assistant Director and the DSM follow the text so that she doesn’t have to look at the script and so can watch the actors and see what they are offering. Although she approaches working with actors differently, depending on the type of play, she generally works more with what the actors are discovering than with research.

She gives time to working with actors on their characters ‘back story’ but she is less interested in finding a clean through line and more interested in the human contradictions that come up – although back story does give the actors something emotional to draw on as does playing in rehearsal. The early work in rehearsal exploring imaginary scenes and interactions between the characters, physicalizing memories is an important building block for the ‘liveness’ of the final performance. Dress up and play gives the actors something physical they can reference. Experiences that are only made for this piece. She says you can feel it in the performance when the actors have been able to be free in the rehearsal room.

Surely on a play like this which is so well documented she must have seen other versions or looked at other videos and designs? No Sarah doesn’t really reference what has gone before. She sees it as imperative that the design and vision for a production reflects why it has been chosen to be done now and in this theatre, in this place. Why are we doing it? is the most important thing to inform the process.

This rationale is a lynch pin in the programme at the Royal Exchange and therefore in which plays Sarah chooses to stage. The time of a single Artistic Director directing the old repertoire, the classic canon of texts, is coming to an end, to be replaced by an increase in new writing and new theatre forms. Younger audiences are highly culturally literate but perhaps not as literally literate or interested and this will drive change. There needs to be a real clarity now about when to stage one of these plays and why.

I find this an exciting vision of the future which will crack open a lot of the norms of who gets to make work, what stories are told and who theatre is for.

A commercial reality remains though, Sarah reflects that the challenge for regional theatre now is to discover truly extraordinary artists. Those whose productions have a ‘game changing’ impact that then enables the work to transfer to other theatres. Theatres need the commercial return from the transfer of productions.

The scale of both that challenge and the opportunity it might present stays with me for some time.

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