What is the show about? And how has it emerged?<\/h3>\n
Schlock!<\/em> is a performance composed of Fifty Shades of Grey<\/em> by E.L James and In Memoriam to Identity<\/em> by Kathy Acker. Through cutting up and splicing these texts together, strange narratives emerge. It is about sex, identity, motherhood, the female body, and death. I explore the material using vocal sounds and poetry, working with a loop pedal to layer up voice and meanings. I weave British Sign Language into the work as a visual layer that also starts to open up my work to d\/Deaf audiences.<\/p>\n I came across Kathy Acker\u2019s books in Dartington College library, and her way of writing made sense to me, in spite of the fact that she subverts expectations of what a \u2018novel\u2019 is, or perhaps because of it. Nothing is quite stable, and the female body is a constant presence. Her books made an impact on me when I was exploring ways of writing myself; it took a while to throw off a kind of surface influence. Now I feel ready to go back to her books and write through them, and to write more deeply about sexuality and the female body. I\u2019m using my work with sound and voice to explore these writings from the inside, from the gut. It\u2019s a more emotional project than my previous work.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t really see it as mixing other people\u2019s writings with my own. I\u2019m not sure what \u2018your own writing\u2019 really means. Does anyone \u2018own\u2019 writing? We all share, and with this project I\u2019m more consciously aware of sharing with Kathy Acker and E.L James. It\u2019s by writing through our shared vocabularies that I manage to say what I couldn\u2019t have imagined.<\/p>\n Uncomfortable and disturbing. I find it shocking that the woman doesn\u2019t want a BDSM relationship and yet Grey doesn\u2019t accept this. When she asks if he could please not hit her again because she doesn\u2019t like it, he replies \u2018you\u2019re not supposed to like it\u2019. Yet teenage girls are reading it unquestioningly as if it\u2019s today\u2019s Pride and Prejudice<\/em>. It\u2019s also terribly written, which makes it harder to just go along with the story. I find it pretty much impossible to read without intervening in some way, without doing something to the text.<\/p>\n Sometimes half a line from one book is merged with half a line from another. Sometimes I will take one line and break down the words into sounds and then use those sounds in other contexts. Having a book on Kindle means I can perform searches for particular words, it offers a different way of intervening in a text (there are 75 instances of the word \u2018pain\u2019 in Fifty Shades of Grey<\/em> \u2013 if you count \u2018painting\u2019 and \u2018paintbrushes\u2019). I hope I\u2019ll be able to have fun with some of the quirks in Fifty Shades<\/em>, such as the main character\u2019s schizophrenic conversations with her \u2018inner goddess\u2019 and \u2018subconscious\u2019. But so far it\u2019s quite dark and disturbing \u2013 particularly when I change the word \u2018dominant\u2019 to \u2018child\u2019 and \u2018submissive\u2019 to \u2018mother\u2019.<\/p>\n With Kathy Acker\u2019s novel In Memoriam to Identity<\/em> I steal the sentences that punch me. Such as: \u2018since women don\u2019t have history, we make ourselves up\u2019. In the end the sentences splice and mix with each other and something happens that doesn\u2019t appear in either text. It doesn\u2019t matter where the lines come from, as long as something happens through the writing.<\/p>\n If I had a particular stance then I wouldn\u2019t need to make the work. Making a performance piece is a kind of investigation into a problem, or a world, or an emotion. I\u2019m not analysing either book, or presenting an argument. I\u2019m using them to make something different. Something that is concerned with sex and motherhood, that uses language from those texts to worry the subject. I don\u2019t know exactly where I stand in it all, but occasionally I catch a glimpse of myself.<\/p>\n You see a woman, surrounded by pages torn from books. A torch lights an elbow, or a knee… a body, parts of a female body speaks… she tells a story through a silent language. She\u2019s looking for words and meanings, for a way of reconstructing a body of text. There is a rich and strange soundscape, alongside sign language and projected text. This work is as much about the landscape of the audience\u2019s imagination as it is about concrete stage images. I hope it will connect with the audience on an emotional, even physical level. Acker wrote: \u2018if the world in which we live is sick, we have to live in the imaginary\u2019.<\/p>\n \u00a0 x<\/span><\/p>\n From politics (Opposition) to pseudo-science (Total Man), Hannah Silva has a track-record of confronting big ideas and revealing the corruption of speech through her unique performances. In her new show, Hannah takes on feminism and the sexualised body. Nick Murray finds out more. \u2018Schlock\u2019 is typically used to describe something worthless, throw-away. Why pick […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[151,3],"tags":[263],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6863"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6863"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16157,"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6863\/revisions\/16157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/5\/5e\/50ShadesofGreyCoverArt.jpg\")
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0![\"\"](\"http:\/\/covers.booktopia.com.au\/big\/9780802135797\/in-memoriam-to-identity.jpg\")
<\/p>\nHow have you found the process of mixing a cut-up\/collage style with your own writing?<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/media.tumblr.com\/1bf39f004c1132831ce0aacebfeefdfa\/tumblr_inline_n8cktrIWoc1ssnugv.jpg\")
<\/p>\nWhat was reading Fifty Shades of Grey<\/em> like?<\/h3>\n
How are you bringing together E.L. James and Kathy Acker?<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/flavorwire.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/07\/acker.jpg\")
<\/p>\nAckers\u2019 visceral writing style seems to be at odds with James\u2019 watered down prose. Is there a \u2018stance\u2019 that the show takes in regards to this?<\/h3>\n
What can audiences expect?<\/h3>\n
Schlock!<\/em> premieres at Aldeburgh Poetry Festival<\/a> on Saturday 8 November. You can catch extracts at Camden People’s Theatre<\/a> and Warwick Arts Centre in October. Tour dates confirmed include mac birmingham and Live Theatre, Newcastle.<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"