performance – 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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