Over six days in August and September Extant worked with a group of female theatre practitioners on a research project, that for the first time explored themes of female sexual identity from a visually impaired perspective. The Show Girl project, funded by Arts Council England London region, used comedy and Burlesque movement as its tools, also attempting to find integrated creative access for the performers and audience. There were 4 visually impaired performers involved in the project, Margo Cargil, Amelia Cavallo, Janee Hall and Heather Gilmore, visually impaired director Alex Bulmer, writer Mandy Redvers Row, assistant director Maria Oshodi and sighted burlesque consultant and choreographer Genevieve I Chang.

Participants and Audience Feedback

“This was a potent subject to tap into. There were endless conversations going on and a great deal of laughter and empathy. I think the process was brilliant. It was entirely collaborative. Everyone contributed to the storytelling and to the movement and to the creative ideas. I think this work is so powerful and so important for women, especially disabled women. There are many social factors affecting those of us who are blind and moving through a sighted world, often dominated by aggressive or invasive behaviour. Keeping a sense of ownership over one’s body, with pride and confidence can be a struggle. The burlesque work gives back our power and our ownership and evokes a sense of liberation and pride.” Alex Bulmer.

“I had not worked with visual impairment before so felt a little insecure at the beginning of the process, but through everybody’s generosity of spirit, I learnt a lot about my own abilities as a facilitator. In the future I would love to further explore subverting normative ways of perceiving sexuality related to visual impairment through choreography, which supports these ideas. I think the practice of burlesque is very useful for expressing subjective marginalities in confrontational ways, but with creativity, humor and a reclaiming of the body." Genevieve Chang

“The subject of the work certainly took me out of my comfort zone. I personally grappled with the concept of stripping from a feminist perspective and also from a moral one. By exposing the female body on stage were we creating erotica? Why were we doing this? How was our work going to be interpreted by women? Who were we doing it for? What were we trying to achieve?

Walking back to my bed-sit one day after rehearsals, it occurred to me that with just one casual glance a sighted person can see me, read me, recognize me or not. In just a few seconds they can know me in a way I will never know myself. For even if I were to spend hours, days, weeks, concentrating excessively, I would never see myself. They will look and forget, but I will never know. Therefore, fully clothed or unclothed, I am equally exposed.

This is not a self-pitying observation but in the context of this project a practical one. Ultimately, I came to the following personal conclusion. By placing an emphasis on clothing and what is revealed when that clothing is removed, we can begin to explore the exposure one can feel when one is visually impaired.” Mandy Redverse Row.

“The question that came up for me is how much of an understanding can one have from a description of what a performer is actually doing? As this is a very visual medium maybe we all need to recreate the movement of exactly what each performer is doing in order to have an innate understanding of what is going on rather than receiving the information second hand. It would be interesting to explore burlesque as an aural presentation.” Margo Cargil.

“I did learn a great deal from the project. I knew nothing about burlesque for starters, so this process taught me about a performance form that I was very ignorant about. Within that I learned a great deal about my own ideas of body image as a blind woman, i.e. worrying about the things about myself physically that I might be unaware of because of my visual impairment. It also made me face some things head on, namely the fear behind being exposed, literally, on stage. In the end it was actually a very liberating experience and a confidence booster. ” Amelia Cavallo.

“As a performer it was a new experience for me to use voice - singing and talking- and I was quite unsure and wary about this, in the end it was quite empowering. I still know that I am a mover/dancer and not a singer for sure but I liked the challenge. I discovered the role of comedy in performing - this is new to me. It was such a fun and fulfilling project. I was challenged and encouraged, It was hard work but the team was well chosen and we all supported and respected each other throughout.” Janee Hall.

“I thoroughly enjoyed the first three days, but was seriously concerned about taking my clothes off in public. I had shared with the group how my confidence about my body had changed, as I had reached middle age, and how I had lost much more confidence because of my deteriorating sight too. Someone in the group said, “Why shouldn’t a middle-aged, partially-sighted woman take her clothes off? This rang in my ears frequently between the two workshop weekends. I think this project has such brilliant potential for development. It is challenging to the audience, whether they be sighted or not. The whole question of female sexuality in this so-called post feminist age poses a big enough challenge to us all. When you add into the mix disability and sexuality, and most importantly of all accessibility, then you have a piece that is not only massively challenging, but because of the form, can be hugely entertaining too. “ Heather Gilmore.

Audience

A sharing of the outcomes to an invited audience took place at the end of the 6 days research and development on September 17th at The Cochrane theatre in central London.

“Once again Extant has managed to intrigue and excite me. Last night's Work - in - progress broke new ground and showed that there is much to Be explored and learned in the field of performance and visual Impairment. You guys rock!”

“The cabaret circuit is crying out for good stuff like this. I thought the discussion after was interesting as it brought up many of the same issues we have with creative sign interpreting, about what information is being given on stage and what comes through the access point. It's really about exploring how to set up conventions without explaining anything at all.”

“I actually found the performance most interesting from a gender/sexuality perspective, above and beyond the disability issues. Looking at the women on stage, one thing, which struck me immediately, is that we rarely get to see “normal” women naked or semi naked or performing sexual roles or expressing themselves sexually, and that was just great.”

“I really had a good time at the show on Monday. I thought it was sexy and funny! I loved the jokes about blindness, i.e. actors walking into chairs, missing the gap in the curtains. As far as the content is concerned, I would have liked it if it had been even raunchier. I suppose that’s getting into audio-porn territory though which is no bad thing in my view (wiggle of eyebrows).”

“A question I would have liked to ask the performers was: As someone who has been blind from birth, I don't feel that I have a complete image of what I look like, or could even conceptualise it if one was planted in my head. If any of the girls are in the same boat, how did they feel exposing parts of their body which they wouldn't usually to an audience? Was It scary? Liberating? did it take a while to build the courage, or did they feel better off because they couldn't see themselves.”

“For me it was the first time that I have noticed audio description. I thought that in the first few sketches it really enhanced the performance, and sometimes the tone of voice was so expressive that it added humour and sensuality. However, I thought on the last sketch especially that the description did not include enough of the detail that I was seeing. At the time, I thought that all description of how the light was reflecting off her flesh, which was slightly moist on her back, how you could see her muscles moving under neath her skin, and the detail of how she moved was left out because it was decided not to get people too excited, or turn it into a porn show? I presumed that if this were more like a more usual Burlesque show, this would have been allowed or even aimed for.”

“Other people in the audience are entitled to their impressions, but I thought some women commenting in the Q&A were over the top, making too much of the fact that we can make jokes about being disabled/blind, or they weren't expecting self-assured women. I thought it was slightly patronising, like they didn't expect you to be capable.”

“It was entertaining, gave power both to the performer and to the audience, a very difficult thing to achieve. I was aware of the complexity of what and who was being addressed, and the possible complexity of response. There was no description of physical characteristics, including ethnicity and body shape. I haven't made anything of this, just observed it. These are factors which will have made an impact on the sighted people and conditioned their responses (comedy versus sexual turn-on for instance).”

“I didn’t expect the blind jokes, thought it was going to be a burlesque performance with VIP’s in it but felt the blind jokes worked brilliantly and delivered by all especially Margo. Not an easy balance to tell blind jokes and find them funny without anyone feeling stupid gilt.”

“The two girls who came on "spying" on the audience for me set up a situation of the watchers being watched so inverted the performance. Then the bit of humour helped me get a sense of what to expect - a cheeky, humours show with an element of subversion - subverting expectations and maybe ideology? I thought the MC Margo Cargill was very self assured and confident. My experience of doing comedy has shown me how difficult the part she played is to pull of and she did it really well. She also had quite a strong stage presence. Also as a somewhat sighted person I did not find the audio description intrusive – my experience of doing a multi delivery like this is it can be distracting for people with the sense being complemented - but then that's our problem! it wasn't the case with your production.”

“I found the work really interesting, thought provoking, funny, intelligent, sexy and imaginative. It was further developed than I expected and it will make a great show.”

“The evening made me realise and appreciate both the limitations and the imaginative possibilities/deception that audio description can provide. Also that audio description is not necessarily a substitute for being able to see but in itself it offers another dimension of experience.”

“What struck me very much was that your piece was very collective, it was very much about the experience of blind women and their take on sex and sexuality and actually to that end it felt very much like a strong piece of disability arts. It was totally unapologetic and in fact wantonly embraced ‘the blind experience’ and I loved it for that.”

“I've never seen burlesque before and know almost nothing of its conventions. I can't therefore comment on your handling of the conventions, although subversion was clearly important. I liked that. I probably wouldn't have liked a "straight" approach - not that I know quite what that would be - although I don't think I'd take the hard-line absolute of saying burlesque exploits women and is always to be condemned. What you did seemed to me to hit the right note - although I don't think everyone agreed.”

“I loved the show -- thought the jokes were great and they really worked to put me at ease ... feeling a bit apprehensive about what to expect re the subject matter and never having been to a performance like this before .. but I found the experience very funny and never felt uncomfortable --- only perhaps at the very end because the last striptease was VERY sensual ... and was much more of a full-on experience than I’d been expecting ...