Vaginal Dramaturgy: Amy Chaffee @ Edfringe 2016

YOUR MOTHER'S VAGINA OPENS EARLY AT EDINBURGH FRINGE FESTIVAL

 ONLY FOUR SHOWS!

Edinburgh, Scotland, August 4-7, 2016

Spotlites Theatre, Venue 278, 22 George Street, Edinburgh, UK 

A quirky, feminine twist comes to the comedy scene in Edinburgh this summer. The two-handed dark comedy, Your Mother's Vagina stages a sneak preview August 4, followed by three shows only August 5-7 at the Spotlites Theatre, before zipping off to the next city on its two-month world tour!

The play bounces through the 7-year friendship of two female co-workers, in a Hollywood industry frequented white-linen restaurant. Navigating career ambitions and infertility with self-deprecating humour, the frankly adult, highly verbal sparring pushes each woman to reveal her secrets and name her shame.

What was the inspiration for this performance?
The inspiration for Your Mother's Vagina was the stories of my friends and I and our shared shame and sense of failure around motherhood - whether we had succeeded or not in becoming mothers, it didn't matter. There was always inherent shame in our bodies. I found that absurd and beautiful and common. 

The fact that more that 75% of women in the first world experience

some form of missed motherhood (by having a child you gave up for adoption; miscarriage or still birth; having a child die; abortion; not having children by chance or by choice) means that it is as as common a human experience as Motherhood is. 

It's really painful but the economic realities of most women's lives is that they have to simply move on. So, it doesn't get discussed, unless you have a friend who is willing to be open about their loss too.  This play means to show the way women talk when men just aren't there to get squeamish or change the subject.

How did you go about gathering the team for it?
My actresses were my muses and I wrote for their voices. They don't live in the same parts of the US as I do and we had a hard time coming together to rehearse. But, the production team were all drawn to the subject matter and the fact that we treat the common tragedy of infertility as a big cosmic joke. My team happens, except

for my poster design, my digital art and my photographer to be all women. All five producers, social media, web designer, my scenic and costume and lighting designers are all women and all highly skilled with years of experience. They were all immediately attracted to the script.

How did you become interested in making performance?

I have been an actress since I was six years old. Due to trying to make a baby and nearly killing myself during the five miscarriages my pregnancy odyssey brought me to, I became less interested in acting.  It was too painful to simply be seen and my finely tuned instrument was, basically, broken.  It probably won't ever be healed fully. I can still sing and I enjoy performing that way.  But, I have turned my feelings into writing in the last five years or so. This is my fifth play - my first one that I was not in.

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?
This process has been unlike any other. I committed to making this show before I had written the script. I wrote it in about 3 weeks with these two actresses and their life stories as lodestars for my storytelling. I think using real life stories is inspiring but can make the structure ungainly, unless you are as free with their life stories as you are with your fictions.  

That's tricky. But, the trickiest thing about this process has been that we have had to skype rehearse 90% of it.  That has been crazy. We are opening it in Hollywood in June and that was meant to be a low-key, soft opening. We hope it will be as well-received abroad. I've never solo-produced an international tour, before.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?
I want the audience to laugh out loud. I want them to think and feel about the word, "Vagina" and the workings of a woman's body in a different way. I can't abide that in America, for instance, in 2011, the Florida State Legislature actually had to vote whether to ban the word "uterus" from being used on the legislative floor in debate. Women's bodies are so shameful in so many parts of the world. I just want to make the medical term for my vagina - "vagina" be less mysterious. 

I also think it's absurd that Facebook and Twitter have been censoring our show online. They claim we are "soliciting a sex act" because we put the actual word VAGINA in our title. There is tons of soft and hard porn everywhere on Facebook but it's all hidden and transgressive. If you hide something or give it a nickname, all of a sudden it has a little charge. If you hide it, someone will also feel shame about it. Ultimately, I want the audience to reconsider women's genitals, reproductive systems and biology with as little wonderment as their own elbow.

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?
Humor. First last and always.  Why did the feminist cross the road? 

That's not funny.

We use cartoon projections, we use blunt language and I want people to confront the great plague of the 21st century which is infertility and the amount of money that is being paid for people's body parts.  I can't do that unless its funny.

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?
All three of us - my two actresses and I, are trained in Fitzmaurice voicework and this project was originally developed to be performed at a Fitzmaurice Encuentro (an "encounter," a conference, a symposium) this summer. The truth and embodied practice of Fitzmaurice creates very bold, risky and funny and earthy work. If we come out of any tradition it is the essential truth of the body that is given a voice through Fitzmaurice Technique. 

My answers aren't particularly funny but I promise you the show is!

Playwright and director, Amy Chaffee, was inspired to write the play after the attempted legislation in 2011 in Florida, US to legally ban using the word "uterus" from public debate in the State Legislature and Senate.  “Censor the language of medicine!? A

woman's anatomy is inherently offensive!? If you can't say the name of this play without blushing, you definitely want to see our show,” says Chaffee.

Hollywood actress, Elizabeth Gudenrath (Princess Diaries I and II) and Professor Rachel Hirshorn (Texas Tech University) star in this UK Premier.  The four-day Edinburgh Fringe Festival run is part of Your Mother's Vagina’s 6-city tour which includes stops in Hollywood, Dublin, Barcelona, Sevilla and Chicago.

 “51% of the world has one… 50% of the world is trying to get up in one. 100% of the world has come out of one.”

Your Mother's Vagina shows at 10am on August 4, 5, 6 and 7 at Spotlites Theatre, Venue 278, 22 George Street, Edinburgh, UK 

Your Mother’s Vagina

Rhombus Ensemble

Spotlites, Venue 278, 22-26 George Street, Edinburgh. EH2 2PQ

Thursday 4 August – Sunday 7 August

11:50am (1 hour)

Ticket Prices:               £5/£3

0131 2402784 

Clickbait Dramaturgy: Milly Thomas and Holy Race Roughton @ Theatre503

Clickbait by Milly Thomas
Theatre503, 
The Latchmere, 
503 Battersea Park Road, London SW11 3BW

Tuesday 19th January – Saturday 13th February 2016

Clickbait is a darkly comic new play about society’s attitude to porn and the women who make it for themselves. 

From the exciting all female writer/director team behind A First World Problem (Milly Thomas and Holly Race Roughan) comes this blistering study of how pornography is
changing women's relationship to sex in the 21st Century.

What was the inspiration for Clickbait? 

Milly - I first got the idea after reading a news story a while back about a young girl who had gone on holiday to Magaluf and performed a sex act in a club in exchange for a holiday. I remember being particularly shocked at the bile that ensued and for some reason the story wouldn’t let me go. 

It made me look at myself and my sisters and friends and wonder about us all. About what we’d do. I had a conversation with Holly that turned into a first draft which then grew and turned into a story about sisters, the porn industry, the world of business, the internet and sexual politics. 

How did you go about gathering the team for it? 

Holly - Milly and I worked on her debut play A First World Problem last year at 503. This production was a turning point for me as a young director as it was the beginning of a real sense of who I was as an artist and having an exhilarating clarity on my aesthetic taste. 

I had a great team of peers working on this show, including the actor / movement director Katie Payne, JMK Award designer Frankie Bradshaw and the brilliant recently graduated producer Jessica Campbell. After Milly sent me the first draft of Clickbait earlier this year I was determined to reassemble this inspired female team. Milly’s writing to me is pulsing, youthful and often outrageous, and it demands bold decisions from its Creatives. I can’t wait to see what we all make together. It’s a generation Y play with a generation Y team!

What made you decide on Theatre 503? 

Holly - Theatre503 has supported Milly and I as a pairing for the last two years. It has become a safe space for us to make bold choices, and to develop as artists. Having been Assistant Director / Associate Director at the NT, RSC, and Royal Court in the past two years, there is a feeling of coming home to be back on the fringe, but in such a well-supported environment. The artistic team at this venue have such integrity and a rigorous attitude to new writing. Theatre503 has had a great year, and we are excited to be kicking off 2016 for them.


Was your process typical in of the way you develop a play? 

Milly - I would say this has been particularly unusual process in that while it is subject matter I’m chomping at the bit to talk about, this structure is somewhat of a departure for me, but feels right for this. Holly is an excellent dramaturg and I always leave sessions feeling fired and wanting to shake it all up. It’s been exciting to watch it grow into something that Holly and I proud of that we can’t wait to share.  

What do you hope the audience will experience? 

Milly - I honestly don’t know – but I hope whatever they do experience gets them talking about how they feel. Auditioning for Clickbait was fascinating as we had so many people come in with such extreme reactions to the script which was really exciting. Some people said they felt empowered, others said they felt horrified, so I’m really looking forward to seeing people’s reactions and hearing the discussions. 

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?

Milly - I feel very lucky to be a playwright right now. There is a current wave of voices that make me so excited about British theatre. It feels pressing and immediate and it gets people talking. Writing is my way of documenting the world as I see it and my way of having discussions with people and making some noise. The creatives on our team, Holly, Jessica Campbell, Jack Sain, Katie Payne and Frankie Bradshaw are all young people with vision and guts. I’m thrilled to be working with them all again and getting messy. 

Are there any other questions that might help me to understand the meaning of dramaturgy in your work? 

Holly - Dramaturgy to me is a shape-shifting role - it comes in so many different forms and is completely different for each writer I work with. Sometimes it is just about reading the near finished draft and asking the right questions, and at other times it has taken me and the playwright days of knocking the play around with actors in a room.

Milly and I have a very personal and practical dramaturgical relationship, we tend to roll our sleeves up very early on in a process and discuss what Milly wants the play to be, and we go through many drafts. Scenes get cut and then added back, the play goes through different structures, we discuss the characters, their relationships, then we cut characters, add new characters, and we have been known to change whole sub plots. It is extremely collaborative and intensive process, but thrilling. It is underpinned by a long friendship that allows a shorthand and trust between us.