Testing, testing...
So I'm Rachel Mars
And I'm nat tarrab
And we have a company imaginatively titled mars.tarrab
And we are working on ROLLER which is the show which falls
under the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award bracket this year
We began with an exploration of roller derby which we were invited into as a kind of
inquiry into how come - could there be a cross fertilization
between theatre and roller derby? It feels like as we interrogated that what
we looked at was female aggression, age and what's the line between aggression
and violence?
What is this sport where women slam into each other on roller skates?
And why do they do that? What's kind of underneath that?
What's happening for them in their bodies, in their psyches that this is a
thing that they do with a massive amount of passion.
There are no skaters who play roller derby like - meh
Like that. They all love it I think those those explorations
kind of were fed by the current re-emerging of the male person in power
as predator or as impinger on the female space that which feels like it's been
supercharged and in the news since we've been really reconnecting with it and
then looking at roller derby through that and going oh yeah look you know
here's a female only space and and here's women exploring their aggression and
being really clear about their boundaries and so I think those two
things have woven together
It's become a kind of very helpful and quite charged
metaphor for preparation for the world outside of the Sports Hall and notions
of doing something again and again and again again to relearn your instinctive
response to something
Whenever we get, we always were quite last minute and that's
part of the process so the bulk of the make always happens like up against the
opening of the show and we always therefore are in a different kind of
political and social environment in the bulk of the make than we were three
years ago there's always a kind of re-shuffling of focus on what are we saying?
Why are we saying it now? Why are we saying it? What are we asking?
We spent yesterday thinking about the word 'revolution' and how it's in sound it's
revolutions per minute which means going around and we're like oh when is a
revolution a cycle and when is it progress or when is it breaking a circle?
What felt useful was the echoes of it so they skate revolutions
there are revolutions in minutes in music, there are loops within the body
the kind of top note of which is the idea that we want to lead the world into revolution
So that our response I think, that our theatrical response to the
Harvey Weinstein et al rising up in recent media events feels like
What then?
What then? And actually no, not what then, we've got the what and it's revolution
There needs to be a revolution
I don't think we're ever gonna save feminism
I don't think we have to. It's a stage full of women talking about violence and
aggression and the difference and the revolution and what you can learn
from smashing women down and rising up again in a kind of consenting, rule driven way
I love it because a lot of people are intolerant of feminists and
I'm like well I'm intolerant of people who aren't feminists. Thank you very much
This feminazi word is an interesting one. Because that was not, that was not in my...
Give it. I'll have that. Feminazi this.
And the feminist killjoy
The feminist killjoy! Genius.
So the feminist killjoy feels like she lives very strongly in the piece
and also in our lives I think at the moment
So we've been investigating the position of the one who stands up and says no
this is not alright or that's not funny or what was, how do you justify that or
what you are saying? And all of those and how she gets to be
the problem rather than the problem being noticed and paid attention to as
a problem because then you get to be the feminist killjoy you get to be on your soap box
Which is where I spent the whole of my university career
There's been a lot of anger in our rehearsal room, a lot of aggression and then an
arising in you towards violence
I'm just super into the idea of smashing someone in the face at the moment
I know
There was a line in the in the work-in-progress
about being exhausted by the act of smashing someone in the face not
exhausted by the effort it takes not to smash them in the face and that's true
for the silence as well that's one of the things in the feminist killjoy
I think that might be the first time we said silence
Aah - silence. Have we not said silence yet?
No but I think it's relevant. Say it louder.
Yeah, we've been thinking about silence
because of the last couple of weeks
and because of voices and making your voice heard
The same sort of thing. It is exhausting to maintain a silence and it's sort of
deliberate that the power structures know that it is exhausting to maintain a
silence so the very people that should be speaking up are exhausted by the the
act of having to remain silent
Feminism is, I mean it's just there all the time, isn't it?
It it's a female identifying team top to bottom and that
feels like if you are given a chunk of money, a chunk of stage time why would
you not give it to female identifying people?
Especially in this industry at the moment
It feels like if the only thing that the show does and hopefully
it will do many other things, but if the only thing that it does is, if we invite
some other women up with us to that place and that we all get to have a
voice there that feels like - done.
We'll just all sit on the stage going 'we're having a voice - thanks'
So what is the revolution?
What is the revolution?
It's a question, isn't it?
Come and see the show! [laughter]