Big sister and The Capitalist Self-Care Club

In autumn 2022, I worked with the MA Performance Practices students at DMU to create short a piece of devised theatre, which I directed and they performed. The project culminated in a public performance of The Capitalist Self Care Club, performed in a studio space at DMU’s PACE building in December 2022.

This was a small cohort of four students in their early twenties, three women and one non-binary person, with three coming from performing arts, drama and creative writing BAs at DMU and one from an external musical theatre BA.[1] This meant that although all four had performance and movement experience, none had extensive training in contemporary dance. The students took on all the production, design and company management roles. In my role as lead artist, I sought to introduce the students to some of the principles of Clowndance that I have been developing, in particular around play, joy and vulnerability. While the approach we took was broadly based on my existing process, the content was entirely led by the students. I wanted to centralise and amplify their voices, their ideas and their agendas.
 
In the first session of the project, I pitched a theme to the students, based on some of my research around clowning, play, joy and feminism. The theme was radical joy- the idea that seeking out and prioritising joy and pleasure is a radical act when placed in the context of late-stage capitalism; a system designed to sell us dissatisfaction and misery.
 
“It is the longing for happiness that is potentially radical, while the morality of sacrifice is an age-old weapon of rulers.” (Ellen Willis in Judith Levine, 2015)
 
They brainstormed these ideas as mind-maps on the theme of radical joy and anger (see images below), and we played with the idea of what ‘self-care’ might mean, set against the backdrop of patriarchal poly-crisis. 

After these first sessions, I reflected on working with this new group- I thought about their responses to material that I had shared, the difference in how they had taken on games that I had previously trialled with dancers, and also about how I was working with them. In my journal I wrote:

 They surprised me today! Great commitment…
​huge vulnerability and deep thinking
Who was I? Woman -  Comrade! - Older sister

​Journal extract 26/10/22

It was the last of these identities that intrigued me the most. I have articulated my rejection of the patriarchal ‘boss clown’ persona in a previous blog, in which I ponder the possibility of working from a matriarchal standpoint instead. I wondered there if I could take Franki Anderson’s lead and lean into my identity as a mother to create a ‘mama clown’ teaching and directing persona. As I worked with this group of students, I began to feel that the parent/child relationship wasn’t the most productive metaphor for how I wanted to relate to them. 
 
My goal was not to impose my own ideas on these younger artists as a boss clown, or to nurture and protect them, as a mama clown. I wanted our relationship to be as equals, while acknowledging that we had different life experiences and therefore different perspectives and roles to play. I saw my role as being to introduce them to new experiences, to en-courage and push them, while making sure they didn’t get into too much trouble. Alongside devising the work, we talked about politics, art and relationships. I preached to them all about the importance of joining a union, and they included me in frank and intimate conversations around sex, gender identity and mental health.
 
It felt to me that I was inhabiting the role of a big sister, who could listen to her younger siblings’ ideas and support their agenda by drawing on her greater experience, with no major difference in status. As I positioned myself more clearly not as a teacher in either of the quasi-parental forms of boss or mama clown, but as a big sister who is just an older, more experienced version of them, I saw that the students felt able to push back and challenge my ideas, and also to bring more of their unedited selves into the work. 
 
We initially planned to build the show around the theme of Ikea; a slightly odd metaphor for customising your life to seek joy within a consumer society, inspired by Björk’s story about getting thrown out of a branch of the homeware store for hosting an impromptu cooking demo in the kitchen section. While I merrily went off to plan scenes around meatballs and Abba, the students had a re-think. They sent me an email expressing their concerns that the theme would be too limiting, and suggesting an alternative; what evolved into The Capitalist Self-Care Club.
 
Sitting within the broader theme of self-care was an unexpected (for me) but thoroughly joyful interest in sexual pleasure, specifically as experienced by people with vaginas. 

 Kitty: I didn’t intend the direction we’ve taken. I was all like, ‘hey, radical joy…’
 
Missy: … and we went ‘we’re horny!’

Journal entry from group discussion 09/11/22 

The students devised a game that could act as a running gag, an interruption and a transition from one set piece to the next: ‘Sex Charades’. Their game rule was deliciously silly and clownlike in its illogic- if someone is clearly miming something sexual, everyone must offer completely non-sexual guesses as to what they are doing, whereas if someone is miming an everyday activity, only obscene guesses are allowed. They refined this game over the course of a few sessions until they could all play it completely straight faced. I love the combination of elements that this game embodies- silliness, taboo, enactments of pleasure, and the raising of a middle-finger to patriarchal ideas that lust is a masculine trait. 
 
Next, we developed a range of scenes, games and moments, and had to work out how to structure them into a short but coherent piece of theatre. While the students were tending to look for narrative- ‘this moment leads to this moment because it makes sense’ I introduced them to a more choreographic, compositional way of working- ‘this moment is followed by this moment because it provides a contrast, or offers the audience something they need’. Explaining how I organise material in a devising process made me stop and think about it in a way I don’t usually have time to do- it made me wonder if clowndance could describe a process as well as a genre, regardless of the performance outcome (see Clowndance as Process blog)

Journeys from one moment to another, not a linear path. No narrative means thinking more about structure- wants and needs. (it’s) compositional- illogical/emotional logic. 

Journal extract 02/11/22

The first (and only) performance of The Capitalist Self-Care Club was at 7pm on 7th December 2022, at DMU’s PACE building. The audience mostly consisted of friends of the cast and DMU faculty members, who responded to the work with warmth and enthusiasm. 
 
Each performer had a ‘spotlight’ moment where they held the main focus. These moments played on their individual performance skills, tastes and interests, and I loved seeing how the sections gave a glimpse of the artist and human behind them. 
 

• Missy created a short dance sequence to Hosier’s From Eden, playing with the idea of knowing a happy secret. She performed it wearing a single sock with a compliment written on it.

 

• Björk wrote and performed a spoken word piece Customise Everything, riffing on the theme of how Ikea can upgrade everything from your boobs to your knowledge of Star Wars. They performed it in a style somewhere between a shopping channel advert and an evangelist preacher, while the other three accompanied the text with semi-improvised go-go dancing.

 

• Imelda played a game of will-she-won’t-she with the audience, which we named ‘Ukulele Edging’ (the term for repeatedly approaching but delaying an orgasm) then sang and played the Dresden Dolls’ Coin Operated Boy on the ukulele.

 

• Eve turned the act of putting on her makeup into a meditative piece of live art. She used individual audience members like mirrors, looking into their eyes as she applied each product. 

As the audience entered at the start of the show, the cast were onstage, dressed in white, in a warm, colourful lighting state, with a soundtrack of female-led pop songs playing. The cast greeted audience members, and once they had found a seat and settled, brought them a white cotton sock and a marker pen, and asked them to write a compliment on the sock, perhaps directed at another audience member.

​One the compliment was written, the cast took the socks and hung them on a clothes airer. At the end of the show the audience were encouraged to take one of these socks from a laundry basket, held by a cast member at the exit door- to literally take a compliment.

Show preset: a clothes rack of socks with compliments written on them

At the start of the show, in between greeting the audience and carrying out the business with socks, the cast simply grooved gently, on their own or with each other, to the songs that were playing. It felt to me like a new iteration of the Dance Like Everyone’s Watching game; they were making their own choices about how and when to move, and who to approach. 
 
I was struck by how watchable these student performers were in this state - they looked alert but at ease, they interacted with the audience in a way that felt mutually agreed in the moment, and the interactions were warm, with a sense of intimacy. They looked genuinely happy to be there, on stage, sharing the experience with the audience. 
 
Watching them, I felt pride in what we had made together, admiration for their bravery and the beauty of their work, fierce affection for all four of them, and a tiny twinge of regret not to be up in the bright light alongside them. I realised again that this was a familiar set of emotions- I was feeling like their big sister.

Kitty with the cast, in costume, just before the house opened

​[1] I am using the same convention of pseudonyms for these students as for research participants- they chose the names Björk, Imelda, Missy and Eve, based on female recording artists whose music we used. They have all given their consent to be included in this research.

Bibliography

Amsden, L. (2016) ‘When they laugh your clown is coming: Learning to be ridiculous in the pedagogy of Philippe Gaulier’s pedagogy of spectatorship’, Dance, Theatre and Performance Training, 7(1), pp. 4–16.

In Conversation with Franki Anderson and Holly Stoppit [YouTube] (2021). (The Why Not Institute Presents). Available at: https://youtu.be/s7DAGDG65pE.

Levine, J. (2015) ‘The Passion of Ellen Willis “She didn’t believe in God. But she believed. Optimism was her faith.”’, Boston Review, 8 September. Available at: https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/judith-levine-ellen-willis/ (Accessed: 19 October 2022).