The Female-Signifying Body Has Always Been Considered ‘Unnatural’ Onstage

A memoir of my highs and lows as a solo performer in London throughout my twenties

“I’m a communist but that was too much”, was a comment overheard by a performer in the bar after a rather spectacular ending of our cabaret act, Dame Theresa and the Whippettes. I am a white, queer, cisgender female and the other two performers in the act were a trans person of color and a black cisgender woman. I often wonder what was too much about it, though I rather liked the critique.

Aristotle’s Poetics is the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory in Western philosophy, and many of his philosophical ideas on performance, such as catharsis, are still referred to in theatre today. He was also known for describing the female body as “a mutilated male”. Aristotle’s comment was indicative of attitudes in Ancient Greece: that women were lesser versions of men: unnatural and freakish. Simultaneously too much and too little.

It is undeniable that the female-signifying body provokes strong reactions in audiences, whether expressed through outrage, discomfort or desire

Therefore it is unsurprising that in Ancient Greece and for many centuries after in Western tradition women were not allowed to perform onstage. If Aristotle’s concept of catharsis has endured over the centuries, it is also possible that the female-signifying body is still somewhat viewed as unnatural on contemporary stages.

We later performed the Dame Theresa act for a feminist theatre festival in London. All the other people performing that evening, like me, were white. The audience was mixed, as I received a spreadsheet of anonymous audience feedback afterwards, which included their gender and racial identity. Those identifying themselves as white, male and middle-aged were riled by the performance. One man commented that the performance wasn’t very feminist. Those identifying as women or queer mostly had positive, if slightly bemused feedback. For example: “Expressionistic and wild. I spent a lot of the performance with my mouth agape!”

Having performed in raucous cabaret venues where the reaction of the crowd was your only feedback, it was the first time I had read anonymous comments about my work. I reveled in the idea that we provoked strong reactions in people, even if they weren’t always positive. It somehow connected to the foundation of why I went on stage and made a spectacle of myself. I did it because I always felt at my core that we were all in need of a massive shake up, particularly in the very white and middle-class realm of theatre. And if theatre wasn’t there to challenge ideas and preconceptions, what exactly was it for?

I even relished the fact that in performances of yore, audience members could throw rotten tomatoes at performers they didn’t like

Why not? In the gentile halls of today’s theatre, there was rarely an element of risk. The basis of my work, which has been described as ‘transgressive’ and more typically as weird, was rooted in my obsession with music hall, vaudeville, and old types of working-class variety shows. I loved the idea that over one hundred years ago, the average working crowd were going to music halls to watch performers who continuously defied gender conventions. I loved that in the UK existed ‘polari’, a gay, coded slang which had its origins in Yiddish and Italian, a common language created by immigrants and queers working together in the music halls of the early 20th century.

It was the reason I eventually moved away from theatre towards cabaret, which I felt kept some of the spirit of music hall. A lot of my own performances were hallmarked by the throwing of foodstuffs at the performer, involving anything from British scones and jam (ouch) to cream pies. My work was born of an inner restlessness.

I worked for ten years, on and off, in theatre and cabaret. My performances usually centered mine and other performers’ bodies, using them as visual references to provoke ideas about gender; desirability; objectification; dominance and empowerment. I noted that people often questioned the need for an overshare of body and nudity onstage. At art college, I did a series of interviews whilst naked, as a performance, to address the subject of nudity and shame. Oddly enough, the Dean of the institution got wind of it, as if it had been secret activity and sent his employees to remonstrate me. I found it strange that this would be considered unacceptable activity at an art college, where life drawing was surely an integral part of its tradition. Using my body in performance naturally became a vehicle to discuss my femaleness, my queerness and I collaborated with queer and gender non-conforming artists to probe these inquiries further.

Performing wasn’t my only bread and butter

That would have been impossible early-mid career living in London. I worked for ten years in hospitality between the ages of seventeen to twenty seven, as a waiter and bar hand. It might be surprising for some, but not others, that I was frequently sexually harassed doing this job. Often whilst in a gravy stained apron and oversized-shirt, whilst there was barely an incident when I performed naked, semi-clothed or in bondage gear onstage. Therefore, the stage became a safe place for me to challenge ideas about my body and gender, whereas performing everyday roles in the real world felt more dangerous.

One particularly prolific period in my career of being sexually harassed was waitressing at a hotel when I was eighteen years old. A colleague reported that after hiring me, the boss had announced to the whole team that it was because I was ‘hot’. Perhaps this set the precedent, as I was subjected to frequent harassment by my supervisor who was over ten years older than me. He would corner me in lifts and stairwells and implore to see and kiss parts of my body, telling me he couldn’t help it and I was driving him crazy. He stole my address from the hotel’s official records so that he could send me a valentine’s card and a CD of Russian love songs. I did not reciprocate his affections, but it was a classic case of feeling guilty, questioning whether I’d led him on. The chefs here would smack the bottoms of waitresses as we passed through the kitchen. I was called feisty because I objected so vehemently to it. At a staff party the head chef, a very big guy, pressed me violently to the wall to kiss me, because again, he “just couldn’t help himself”. I managed to push him off.

It never even occurred to me to lodge a complaint

In fact, at one point, the female boss took me aside to say that I needed to stop distracting the menfolk from doing their job. I reiterate that I was usually wearing a greasy apron and an unbecoming shirt the shade of maroon. It became clear to me from a young age that how you present your body does not correlate to the level of respect you are treated with. The lack of respect I encountered as a young woman in the hospitality industry had no bearing on how I behaved, how I dressed. And more to do with the fact that I was considered a low-skilled worker, an easy target for those in positions of power.

I guess I was the lesser, mutilated male, reflecting the wants and needs of my superiors. On the stage, I was also seen as freakish, too much, but there we could suspend belief. I could use my body to instigate a conversation, I could pretend to wield a power that I didn’t have in other aspects of my life.

As a solo female performer, it was important to seek spaces that respected me

This wasn’t always easy and judging by the testimonies of my fellow performers, harder for trans people, Black people and people of color. Red flags are venues that are too casual in the way that they hire you, unwilling to answer your questions, talk to you or accommodate you when you arrive at the venue. Of course, a lot of the people running these events are often squeezed busy trying to keep the show running smoothly on little pay. But you can tell the difference between an incredibly busy person who respects you and one that doesn’t. I always had uplifting, and incredibly moving experiences when I performed in LGBTQ+ spaces. There is a reason that there are such high standards of inclusion and safety in these spaces. In a world where queer and gender non-conforming people are continuously at risk of violence, it is important that LGBTQ+ spaces continue to be supported and protected.

One of my worst nights as a performer was the same year that I decided to stop performing altogether. It was at a cabaret venue in London. Almost immediately after I’d left the stage, the stage manager stormed into the backstage area where I was getting changed, shouting about the mess, repeatedly calling me a cunt. I was wearing only a skimpy pair of briefs and was in that delicate post-performance come-down phase.

He apologized to me later that night. I had been crying in the dressing room. He told me that he was stoned and had been triggered by seeing me dressed up as our current Conservative female Prime Minister (at the time, Theresa May), flaunting tits and power, cracking a literal whip, when she was destroying the lives of so many people he knew. He sincerely apologized and hoped that I wouldn’t be deterred from performing there again. Unfortunately it was too late. I accepted the apology, but I was done with the place, I was done with the act. I think I knew then I was done with show business too. My safe place didn’t feel so safe anymore.

I often used my cisgender, white female body as a kind of grotesque instrument

I could sympathize with him, my intention had been to provoke. A provocation of the power it held, whilst also referencing the eroticization of female power. Watch any of the old Hollywood femme-fatales and note that a voluptuous female body is often equated with transgressive evil. I usually juxtaposed the oversexualised parts of my performance with the imagery of the typical white ‘English rose’. I would begin my performances wearing a white dress and singing There’ll Always Be An England by Vera Lynn. This was an aggressively-jingoist war song by Lynn, who is better known for gentler jingles such as, We’ll Meet Again, establishing her as the British Nation’s sweetheart during World War II.

Since this incident, I have thought about how strange it was that my satirical, dominatrix-style clowning had triggered this man so much as to break a professional code of conduct. I wondered if him invading my most intimate of moments after the show was his way of getting the power back, breaking the fourth wall.

Performing is scary. It is entirely fictional, but it can bring up real emotions in your audience. This is why the demystification of bodies is so important. How far have we really come from the Ancient Greek philosopher’s concept of the mutilated male? The more people understand how many wild preconceptions and ideas are attached to the body, the safer we will be. The safer the female body, the trans body, the disabled body, the queer body. Performance is a way of imagining a future without violence towards a body for merely existing.

My performances fanned the flames to talk about stigma; I wanted the audience to recognize their own prejudices and fears as they watched. The performance was always geared towards the Aristotelian catharsis, invoking “pity and fear”. Purging the audience of their own preconceptions about the bodies on stage. The ultimate reveal would be the vulnerability and humanness beneath the body shells of the performers.

Will we be able to purge ourselves of these stubborn concepts that seem so impossible to dislodge? My hope was, and still is, that the “mutilated body” will transgress beyond the pity and fear of catharsis, towards an acceptance and understanding that it is a body like any other, but at the same time utterly incomparable.