As We Like It - Orley Quick & The Hairy heroines
Screwed, a three-night event at The Bunker Theatre promising “curious, (dis)honest and unhinged” performances, assured the audience of eclecticism. A buffet of relatively short dance pieces, if you will.
Curated by Orley Quick, the array of talent ranged from the theatrical to the bizarre (we’ll get into that later); and I had the opportunity to once again watch one of my favourite pieces this year – Orley Quick’s, and the Hairy Heroines’, brainchild As We Like It.
Sadly unable to witness the opening and closing nights, I turned up with eager eyes on day two (Sunday 30 July). As I sat down in the second row, my eyes took to the projection of the choreographers of the night in the Screwed flyer style on the back wall; and I must say I found it quite daunting. The Bunker Theatre is an underground venue, with a sunken stage – almost in the format of an amphitheatre – which had an atmosphere of unavoidable darkness.
Something about the staring, smiling, levitating heads in dark space seemed comically sinister. The sombre tunnel-like corridors I had to pass through to reach the stage area propped up this feeling.
Huge digression aside, As We Like It opened the evening. I first saw the piece at The Place in January and must come clean of my biases before delving deeper. I described it as a “deconstruction of gender… that works”. It’s an incredibly aware piece – aware of how each technique, movement, and theatrical device could be used to drive the sociological points home. I was able to further dissect the piece with Orley during an interview.
My first thoughts on this particular evening were of the size of The Bunker and if this would hinder the piece. The premier of As We Like It benefited from the room afforded by The Place. It had an air of breath to its progression (I recall the elegant penny-boarding around the stage of Tyrrell Foreshaw, with silk cloth flowing behind him). How will they manoeuvre the space? Will the grand, playful world they created at The Place be inherently different to the inevitable and imminent small world?
Yet I was also eager to see As We Like It from a new, intimate perspective (I sat quite far back at The Place).
The three performers – Diogo Fernandes de Jesus, Tyrrell Foreshaw, and Elliot Minogue-Stone – begin the deconstruction of gender by swinging between elegant, flamboyant thigh slapping to aggressive, play-fighting. A contemporary Haka of sorts. An observation of boisterous playfulness and competition. Awkward laughter echoed as an unsure reaction to what was unfolding; a feeling that was present throughout the piece. One I imagine was intended.
It’s a tricky piece to navigate as an audience. It’s quite easy to make the layer of silly the focal point of the piece – the way the performers totally embody the playful flamboyant theme is enough to be entertained by. But beyond that, lie layers and layers of commentary on gender. Take a scene where the three performers take downstage. Stood in their seemingly ordinary and typically masculine clothing – simple dark jeans and a palette of pastel blue and maroon shirts – they begin to undress, with deadpan stares into the audience. Tyrrell unveils a long flowing maroon dress, Elliot, an olive-green dress, and Diogo, a pastel green dress.
The significance could be missed. But the fact the dresses were always worn under the casual day-to-day clothes for what seems to be about a third of the piece needs a closer inspection. Is this an observation of femininity existing in all of us? Or perhaps a commentary on the struggle to accept such a side to us. Diogo is a perfect example of this. Earlier on, he broke out in a fit of gut-wrenching primal grunts and screams, abruptly cutting into the flamboyant characterisation by all. That, to me, appeared to be a rejection of where the scene was headed – into uncharted, feminine territory.
Review extract from Screwed at The Bunker Theatre, written for Gender in Dance.
