Mad:

Why did you choose this topic?

 

Abbie:

The topic is sexual assault and violence against women, and I chose it because it is a very prevalent issue in the media and…yeah so I chose it because yeah it's a prevalent issue. You hear about it through social media that like so many people are affected.

 

Yes, like it can be a bit of a cliche in terms of I want to do something that changes people's minds you know. Yeah, um it was something I felt passionate about just from my own experiences in the world um from friends families experiences and stories that they've shared with me that I'm actually like it's something I'm passionate about I'm very like angry about and I wanted this to sort of explain my anger…And put a place to my anger because men suck don't put that in there. Why is it this is another thing don't put this in for your self-medicine is that every time you say anger my brain gets a little red man.

 

 

Mad:

Talk me through your process of developing this performance.

 

Abbie:

Well, it started with me… well I originally planned to do this about uh witches and um that ended up getting left behind or once I started doing a bit more research um so yeah it really changed forms.

 

My [Original] idea was witches… it was meant to be women are still witches and that is the label we're put on we're put towards um when um men like when we go against the patriarchy and men can't control us uh and that was my initial idea um and it was meant to be like this this young girl initially was attacked and um she goes to her ancestors who were witches for help and power to seek revenge but I thought that the seeking revenge part was a little too aggressive like came across too angry you know?

 

I started doing a lot more research so I wanted to do the verbatim theatre, but I realised that would be very difficult with the position I was in, and I would need ethics committee approval and that wouldn't work out.

 

So, I chose to do documentary theatre…I started researching different sexual assault stories from modern media, mythology... I had sort of independent scenes of each other, and I had an almost storyboard where I wanted the young girl who I hadn't chosen a name yet to sort of summon her ancestors and these independent stories were going to be her ancestors sharing their story. But it was getting to the point where I was moving further away from the concept of witches that it would be awkward if I now involved that, so I had to pick up a different route and this is when I went back to my research. And that's when I found out about these statues all over the world that it's a tourist attraction to grope them, these mostly being female statues and they're bronze statues and because they're being shined so much by people constantly, they turn gold where they're being touched so their breasts turn gold.

 

And so, I chose the youth being the name being rather symbolic as well as it's one of the statues and that's when I intertwined the youth story and the youth advocating for these other women's stories into it. So yeah, and that's when I came up with the idea of the youth and used her as my transitional character and my character that connects all the independent stories.

 

Abbie:

I chose Medusa from mythology, I chose Aurora sleeping beauty from her original story so not the Brothers Grimm, the one before that which- Yeah where she's raped and impregnated.

 

Mad:

We love waking up in childbirth.

 

Abbie:

Yeah (laughs). I found two different #MeToo videos on YouTube of people sharing their story and combined them being documentary theatre and then I also used that one's another YouTube video and then I used some of the speech from the Larry Nassar trial.

 

I tend to improvise to start with, play around with keywords that are from that research and then I'll improvise a scene, get some key lines that I like from the improvising and script from there…I didn't go in story order obviously so like I said I started with these individual scenes from the key characters in history and contemporary times that I wanted to use. So improvised and scripted those before I then found my character to combine them all and bring them all together. I don't do it in order I find because- and I actually did my ending before I found my beginning…I did it very out of order, but I did have a timeline I guess that like things needed to be done by which I did stick pretty closely to.

 

I did in them between like weeks five to eight sort of lose a lot of motivation. That's when I went back to my research a lot and that's when I found this the character of the youth and then in the weeks leading up to my performance I crunched down and finished it. Yeah, I just lost a lot of motivation in the middle I think because I was focusing so much on it.

 

 

Mad:

The audience obviously becomes uncomfortable when it like confronted with this kind of story.

 

Abbie:

Yeah.

 

Mad:

How did you go about like knowing that feeling that you're gonna make people uncomfortable?

 

Abbie

I wanted to make people uncomfortable. I do wish I had a bigger audience and an audience of more even gender.

My intention was to make people uncomfortable, to make people think if there were men in the audience think about their actions and their friends' actions because a lot of innocent things can be not so innocent. And even women. I'm not saying men are the only ones who assault people. Women can also be perpetrators. So, the idea was to force them to be comfortable in an uncomfortable setting because it's something that needs to be talked about. Something that needs to be, people need to be more open about that stigma needs to be disintegrated and that was my aim to just get people talking and to be comfortable in the discomfort. You can quote me on that. (laughs)