TWITCH is a solo performance and companion piece to Jock Tamson’s Bairns – though it works as a standalone offering. Jock Tamson’s Bairns is an immersive club experience where the audience is invited to attend a drag show that is derailed by disclosures of abuse.
The show featured a story that addresses experiences of hate crime and toxic masculinity when young. During show development and final public presentation it became apparent that this story is a show in itself, too much to be covered in a multi-faceted immersive theatrical experience.
TWITCH tells that story in full in a meaningful way. Told through my eyes, the piece draws reference from Bessel van der Kolk’s bestselling paradigm for the treatment of PTSD ‘The Body Keeps the Score’ (eurgh, I know, I’m such a basic bitch) and will unpick my numerous fight-or-flight ‘ticks’ in a love letter to my past as I work with the audience to construct a manifesto for the future.
For TWITCH, the only way to tell this story is to go back to my roots as a physical theatre performer.
‘In 1980, at the age of 4, I watched a violent man punch my mother square in the face. I carried that trauma in my mouth until I was 13. In 1983 I walked into the kitchen to find my dad holding a knife to my mum’s throat. That one stayed with me through college. In 1988 – he kicked her square between the legs on the street when we were on holiday because the pawn shop wouldn’t take her wedding ring, and we were out of petrol. No-one intervened. My gait changed completely that summer’.
It won’t be as bleak as it sounds. In fact, while I have only relatively recently returned to the stage after a 15 year break, I am already developing a reputation for punctuating scenes of tragedy with extreme comedy, sometimes dark, sometimes flippant, but always deliberate. It’s a trait that runs through my last 3 commissions.
Using a combination of techniques drawn from dance, drag, spoken word, comedy and film, TWITCH will also explore the power of escapism through pop culture as a survival tool in the darkest of times.
It aims to draw my audience into a conversation through the open space discussion techniques I use in Jock Tamson’s Bairns. I trained as an actor in the 90s, specialising in physical theatre. It wasn’t until I signed up for a number of workshops with Frantic Assembly that I truly got what the possibilities were of merging text with physicality. At 49, my tastes have changed significantly, partly due to being surrounded by brilliance and partly because I now know how to harness my creative capacity.
TWITCH is a solo performance. But it’s not a solo endeavour. I’ve already undertaken a two week solo-residency with SURGE to develop the concept, and now I need collaborators to take the show to production.
BCW 