A new crop of artists is prompting audiences to reflect on their attitudes to bare bodies on stage, writes Rachael Healy.
“Dirty slut,” I read out from a prompt card to the performance artist Lucy McCormick, who is lying on stage, covered in soil, blueberries, glitter and not much else. The microphone moves to someone in the next row: “You deserve to die.” “Filthy bitch.” And on and on. She’s Anne Boleyn awaiting execution, we’re the baying crowd.
In Post Popular, McCormick’s latest solo theatre show, she searches for a hero among the famous women of history. She plays all of them, which, she points out, doesn’t take much time.
Post Popular is a messy, physical spectacle that plays with the audience, food and nudity. Serious truths (that Anne Boleyn’s story is not dissimilar to the way we treat female celebrities now) contrast with perfect daftness (smashing apples all over the stage to set the scene in the Garden of Eden), as our ideas about what it means to be a hero, vulnerable and exposed are subverted... Keep reading on iNews
“Dirty slut,” I read out from a prompt card to the performance artist Lucy McCormick, who is lying on stage, covered in soil, blueberries, glitter and not much else. The microphone moves to someone in the next row: “You deserve to die.” “Filthy bitch.” And on and on. She’s Anne Boleyn awaiting execution, we’re the baying crowd.
In Post Popular, McCormick’s latest solo theatre show, she searches for a hero among the famous women of history. She plays all of them, which, she points out, doesn’t take much time.
Post Popular is a messy, physical spectacle that plays with the audience, food and nudity. Serious truths (that Anne Boleyn’s story is not dissimilar to the way we treat female celebrities now) contrast with perfect daftness (smashing apples all over the stage to set the scene in the Garden of Eden), as our ideas about what it means to be a hero, vulnerable and exposed are subverted... Keep reading on iNews