Wednesday 20 March 2013

Hello

Hi,

My name is Claudia.  I'm a London based performer and writer, specialising in Physical Theatre, comedy and devised work.  

I'm currently in the process of devising my first solo show, Jewel - a a grotesque comedy show inspired by beauty pageant culture - which I will be performing at Brighton and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals this summer.  I play five different characters, three of which are a daughter, mother and grandmother viciously competing in the same crucial pageant.  The show is self-produced and directed (with the odd bit of feedback from friends and family) and so, as a fringe novice, I'm throwing myself very much in at the deep end, partly to test my own capabilities, but mostly due to poverty.  It will be, and is being, a huge learning curve.  

I've set up this blog especially to document the show and the devising process.  

Initial inspiration: 

It all started when I was idly flipping about on YouTube and came across a reality show about child beauty pageants in the U.S (which I won't name).  Beauty pageants naturally appeal to me (in a 'wow, how fascinatingly grotesque' way) and my love of campness and excess.

But there was more to it than that; there's something ugly about beauty pageants.  They allow the sexual objectification of women and girls to take place in a very controlled environment, in which the parading and pitting against one another of contestants is carried out under the guise of admiration, respect and investment in young womens' futures.

The Miss World, Miss Universe and Miss America pageants all started out, essentially, as swimwear modelling events, back in the early to mid 20th century, growing in popularity with the advent of television.  Men behind desks scored bikini-clad hopefuls on their Vital Statistics in contests that pandered to the male gaze, in the name of entertainment. The later addition of things like Final Questions and Talent portions were, arguably, nothing more than reactionary measures designed to calm the wayward tits of the women's lib movement.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for charity and scholarships and self betterment and all that, but that's  precisely why I'm uncomfortable with those things being associated with beauty contests.  What the title of Miss World / Miss Universe / Miss Earth / Whatever ultimately says to me is: "Female deemed most suitable to waft gracefully around the planet, giggling in a charming yet suitably restrained manner, shaking hands with 'important' men and doing bits of charity, all the while perspiring feminity like a fine, entrancing mist".  That the face of such humanitarian deeds should be so - frankly -
un-human (and by un-human I mean unrepresentative of humanity as a whole and solely representative of Western, normalised beauty standards) irks my feminist self.  Bert Parks, the iconic Miss America emcee between 1955-79 allegedly asserted, in response to a journalist asking what he'd do if a protester were to walk on stage while he was singing his famed theme tune  that he would "grab her by the throat and keep right on singing", sending out a very clear message that one kind of woman deserves adoration and gentlemanly treatment, while another deserves violence.

With that in mind, however...

The show isn't overtly political, rather it addresses my feelings on beauty pageants in a far more surreal, silly - and hopefully subversive - way.

Above all else, it was the codified style of movement - of walking, to be precise - and of smiling, of exuding charm at every possible juncture that grabbed my attention and inspired me to explore the fascinating physical language of pageants.  

The subject offers MASSIVE scope for play and subversion and, though I'm hardly the first to utilise it, once I'd begun, that was that.  

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