Down by the tracks // Women on the fringe
Thoughts on Feminine Structures in Performance & Creation
Vol.1 Don’t Blow Your Cover Girl…
On Jill Connell’s “The Supine Cobbler: A Contemporary Western for Girls”
DANCER: /Listen
COBBLER: /I’m listening.
Jill Connell is a woman who wrote a western for women.
What does that mean? To you? To me? To anyone?
Listen—I don’t know yet what it means, certainly not what it means to you, but I’ve got some theories. Listen--how about you and I meet in the back corner, near the old piano, in that smallish glow from mediocre candles and I’ll let you in on what I know (or think I know) so far. Listen/I’m listening…
We meet in a relatively unmarked industrial space beside an old fort right beside the passenger and freight train tracks. In the middle of a city we are nowhere to be found. We begin each day with movement work. The woman guiding this practice taught me in theatre school. That was ten years ago—holy fuck—and here I am, being invited to return to (meet) my practice again (anew) in order to experience it “this time”. The individual movement work then shifts into a partnered authentic movement practice. My eyes are closed, I’m sweating, its hot and dusty in here. I’m in a room with some women moving and some women witnessing and we are all attempting to listen, to receive, more fully.
On day 2, or 3, of this round of creation (heading towards production) my eyes are closed and I’m the mover in this witness/mover relationship. The woman witnessing me knows me to my core, so much so that my subconscious invokes her in powerful dreams in order to nudge me closer to my Self. One of those people who see you, you know the kind, at least I hope you do. I lose track of time with my eyes closed, moving. The usual fears and habitual thoughts run through my mind, "...Am I doing this right? Am I thinking too much about doing this right? Am I trying to be interesting? Am I judging my thoughts too much, am I present, where am I, who cares, do I like this, what is authentic, am I present?"--just the usual terror, strangeness, curiosity, and challenge of being alive inside my Self. Despite the brain chatter I move and keep moving, and then I feel that sensation that anyone who has long hair has felt, when your hair elastic is too loose to hold your bun together and it’s all sliding down about to slide off completely. Fuck—is anything about this authentic? I keep my eyes closed and decide the simplest way to deal with this focus-pulling hair-event is to intervene and relocate the hair elastic to my wrist, and continue with my hair down and free. This seems normal. Like a normal, reasonable thing to do.
What made this event significant to me are the feelings I had as my hair began to become un-tied:
“Oh no, oh no, oh no, now they will know I am a girl, my hair is gonna give me away. My cover is blown, fuck.”
Everyone in that room knows I am female, loves that I am female, and knows I have long hair (which has traditionally and complicatedly been associated with “femaleness”). Everyone in that room at that moment also identifies as female, has a female body and has hair (of various lengths). So what is this feeling that my physical self, my Body, my hair, is somehow betraying my identity--is a liability? What is this momentary flash of shame, fear, and failure? My knee jerk reaction is, “I have failed to contain my unruly hair in this moment, it’s messy, it’s coming undone, this long hair that is traditionally considered “feminine” I’m sorry, and also FUCK now you can see my inability to control this part of myself, now you’re gonna think I’m a girl--double FUCK”
Listen—we can talk about how I’ve lived a lot of my life as “one of the boys”, listen—we can talk about how much power I know I can glean from society by being able to pull this “one of the boys-ness” off—listen, we can talk about the various men in my life who have congratulated me, or simply asked me if I wish I was “one of the boys” and me without hesitation replying “everyday of my life”, we can talk about internalized sexism and misogyny, listen—we can talk about all of that, we can psychoanalyse the shit outta it, we can talk about how you do or don’t experience this with your hair, we can talk about how much this says about gender, and me, and my relationship to my Body and fear, and constructs of every kind, about you and yours, we can, I hope we will, but I’m not finished the hair story….
So my cover is blown and my long, messy, ‘I don’t own a hair brush’ hair is now exposed and I can’t think of myself as without gender suddenly. I don’t even feel like a man with long hair in this moment. I feel like a girl. Or like some idea of a girl. Like everything female, a women’s hair is another political battlefield—another “sort of” space for her to display her politics, whether she knows it or not, a supposed signifier attributed by social constructs in order to be interpreted by said constructs in order to place a woman somewhere on the spectrum of WOMAN (oh god so exhausting…and I have Caucasian hair, when I listen to my friends speak of their experience of female hair identity intersecting with racial identity and racialized beauty narratives the battlefield exponentially expands…) So the nest, weeds, wild grass, summer storm of hair is OUT. And I’m moving into this cloud of hair and the sudden shame, fear, and anger has passed and now something else happening….these other feelings I have about my hair….
Listen—I can’t talk about hair without talking about sex, or at least thinking about it-- if that makes you uncomfortable or aroused (or neither or all) so be it, we did decide to have this conversation in a dimly candle lit back corner and I’m probably whispering. Lean in.
What else have you got to do right now?
My hair is down and in it there are secrets.
My hair is down and histories of my Self hang and tangle in the strands.
My hair, the ends of which are the oldest, bleached out from many summer’s sun—my hair, uncut for over a year, bounded under wigs, braided by the ocean, rolled and pinned for work, steamed enough to curl in the sauna, forgotten about, annoying, whatever, oiled with lotions, scented with spices, played with, pulled, grabbed, grasped, falling down, shielding my face, or that of my lovers, hiding my neck, or that of my lovers, getting in my mouth, or that of my lovers, in the wind, whipping, tangled, sopping wet, heavy, piled high, greasy as fuck, clean and slippery, lathered, frozen with ice, snow caught, wisps and sweat, dyed, curled, ironed, chameleon changed, thrashing, flying, dancing, behaving, misbehaving, following/defying gravity—dead and alive.
Hair. So intimate. So pedestrian. So politicized. So unimportant. So festishized. So boring. So personal. It’s just hair. Dead and alive.
Tell me, can you remember the smell of your lover’s hair? Perhaps that is not a strong desire for you. For me, I have to take a break from writing because I have closed my eyes and am remembering into being the unique smells of my lovers’ hair. Who can write in this sudden intoxication?
[Time passes remembering the smell of your lover’s hair]
Point being, tangled within the shame, fear and anger I find the power, pleasure and knowledge of Body.
/Listen
/I’m listening
The lines happen simultaneously in the script.
The performers uncover and act within a shared impulse.
My feelings happen simultaneously, are contradictory/complimentary within a shared event.
Point being, I grew up in a world where I learned to conceal my femaleness. Power came from when to hide and when to show.
Point being I am rehearsing a Western, and the concern of heroes in a Western is how to be a man. Maybe a good man, maybe a bad one, but a man.
Point being, what is a woman concerned with trying to be good at being a man?
Point being, I think I know how to do that. I think I’ve learned. Point being, I am both rewarded and reprimanded in my society for being a woman good at “being a man” (which seems to mean the ability for both men and women to conceal/control feminine qualities present within both men and women). I do not yet live in a society where a man is rewarded for being “a woman”. He is definitely reprimanded for it though.
Point being, our team is exploring Feminine principles in story structures, process and creation. Listen—my understanding of Masculine principles and Feminine principles has nothing to do with physical bodies, genitals, or your potential issues with gender binaries. I’m talking about Masculine and Feminine principles that we all have within our Psyches. This time you can lean back against the wall and I’ll lean in, the candles are getting low and night has certainly fallen around us…
Listen—I hate to get Modern Euro-Centric/Global North Centric so fast—we just met—but where the fuck else can I speak from just now? Here in the West the history of the hero is a male history. A man goes out into the world to save it and therefore himself, or die trying, and somehow now we believe that a man saving himself is enough to save the world because he is somehow the world……(our society prizes Individualism above all else and besides only superheroes with super-powers save other people now). So now, if we put a woman in this role, is she fulfilling a man’s story? Is the structure a male structure? Out into the problem, outward action, action, action, action, linear plot, obstacles, temptations, mystical tests, transformation, success—and death can be success—return home better. End. Put a woman in that structure, (and not have the ending be marriage bliss)--yep, awesome, you go girl I want those stories too—but, listen/I’m listening—what if the story structure doesn’t function that way? Or does it?
/Listen
/I’m listening.
One action is an instruction to receive.
Simultaneously another action is both a declaration of a state of active receptivity and a possible response to an offered instruction the very moment it is offered.
Receptivity is considered a Feminine quality (or principle). There’s a common misconception that this means receptivity is somehow “passive”, that’s one of the great myths that wants to slant Feminine principles as non-active and therefore ‘less-than’. The multi-directionality of openness required for receptivity is vast and takes active focus to attempt and maintain.
Which is why being present within my Self moving in space while being aware of the space and myself is such a challenging and full practice.
How do we listen to story? How do we “story” our story-telling? Our story-making? How do we change the story within our listening? How do we listen to how we are listening? What are we listening to?
Point being, I don’t know if I’ll wear my hair up or down inside this performance. In case that was the burning question you’re coming away with after this story.
If you know me, my cover is already blown.
If you don’t know me, part of my cover is blowing my cover.
In a relatively unmarked industrial space beside an old fort right beside the passenger and freight train tracks there’s a group largely comprised of women and a few men investigating art-making. Our space is on the fringe, the fringe often being a space women occupy in social-power structures and in the art-making industry. In the middle of a city we are nowhere to be found.
You will have to come to us.
/Listen
/I’m listening
For now we are concealed.
We are listening.
Keep listening.
