I went to see Vincent Dance Theatre’s Motherland recently, which is a well put together piece of theatre about gender politics. Its central character is a young girl, through whose eyes we see a warped adult world. These adults are caught up in a tangle of gender quandaries – botox, sex, birth and machismo. The poignant question she asks them is ‘What are you doing?’
Much of the material is about familiar gender struggles told mainly through the rather bloody experience of the women in this story. I can relate to much of it. There is a monotony to female cycles – being doubled in pain every month, having unpredictable mood swings, the routine of family life. The childbirth scenes are especially graphic reminding me of the less than glamorous realities of womanhood.
What resonated most was the little girl. At one point she puts on a pair of adult sized red high heels which are swiftly taken from her by a male adult, a father figure. I remember that childhood ‘dress up’, putting on my mums jewellery and shoes. I guess it made me feel part of an adult world that looked so appealing from my child eyes. As a teenager, I can remember wearing the shortest of skirts and high heels but I was mostly unaware of how this objectified me. I got into a number of tricky situations when I was a teenager but these were all before social media, mobile phones and the world wide web. The young girl in this piece takes a ‘selfie’ with a mobile phone, which really made me think – I can not even imagine the trouble I could have got myself into if there had been Facebook and such things in my teenage years. These days we have to be careful about sharing pictures and information of ourselves via digital media. We probably need to make our children aware of these dangers as soon as they have access to a mobile phone or the internet. When you think that the average ten year old is already desperate for a mobile, it doesn’t leave much time for childhood does it?
Motherland certainly lays these issues harshly at our feet to examine. Images of skimpily clad female rock stars, one of whose eyelashes keep sticking together really drive home the ridiculousness of the things women can do in the quest to ‘look good’. These women looked like they came from the 1990s Robert Palmer video, ‘Addicted to Love’. Only, unlike the red lipsticked vacant girls in that video, they are not mute, but feistily screaming about the inequalities of womanhood.
This was an accomplished production. The music was beautiful and inventive with an array of sounds that were melodic and gave a sense of family and community rooted in traditional folk cultures. The performers were gutsy and definitely put it out there, and I agree with many aspects of the messages. I hate the unrealistic expectations that the media put on women. I am sad that many women feel that their naked (no make up) ‘selfies’ are such an ordeal to reveal on social media (I am talking about the huge cancer campaign that asked women to take photographs without make up and post on Facebook to raise money for cancer).
The thing is, I feel I should have loved this piece. Afterwards, I was left wondering why I didn’t.
As the piece rolled out I kept thinking about the all people and stories of gender that were not represented, which made me feel uncomfortable. Viewing theatre is all about a person’s previous reference points. Different cultural, social and gender experiences can hugely alter how we interpret what we see. Yet we can’t expect a piece of theatre to speak to, and for, all groups and cultures. It’s an impossible expectation. So there is my dilemma with Motherland. The problem was that this piece seemed to represent diversity in age, gender and nationality in an impactful way. This is one of the things that impressed me – men of different ages, women of different ages, a child, different nations. I just couldn’t help but wonder how watching this would have felt if I hadn’t seen anyone on that stage that looked like me?
Vincent Dance Theatre‘s Motherland was shown at West Yorkshire Playhouse and continues it’s 2014-15 tour.