SHE.

Work in the Third Person

I have always been interested in creating characters for the stage. The feeling of transforming and embodying ‘someone else’ is freeing. I say things (with my body…with words) that I might otherwise not. This allows me to address my own fears around fallibility and difference, and thereby engage with these ideas in performance.

These characters that I inhabit are costumed women. I’m interested in over-dressing, because I think the female body often disappears in an effort to avoid objectification. The costuming I choose is often traditionally ‘feminine’ (heeled shoes, dresses). This clothing alters and challenges the body and immediately puts these women in dialogue with labour (in the Marxist/Brechtian definition of the word).

Women and labour is an important theme in the work of my characters. These women are attempting to re-shape the world around them, through movement, words, and physical tasks. Space, time, ideas, and objects are manipulated, worked through, and re-purposed in pursuit of the power to re-shape the world around them.

I have studied Character and Bouffon with master teachers Philippe Gaulier, Adam Lazarus, and Sarah Sanford, and I integrate this comedic work as a choreographic decision. These female characters embrace the mistakes and the presence of the audience - these elements are vital for the life of these characters.