FESTIVAL THEATRE | Feminism
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It’s possible that this white male needs to take a backseat, for once. Amanda Kelleher’s Coccinellidae has a soundscape collating women’s voices: Lee Minora has a few questions to ask her. LM: Hi Amanda. I’m excited to have the chance to chat with you. Your show sounds really rad. I understand coccinellidea are a type of bug often called lady beetles. What made you choose that title? AK: I called it Coccinellidae (ladybird in Latin) for two reasons. Being called a bird in Britain really annoys me – as does lady. Both terms for me signify appeasement and rules and being minimised. By co-opting the phrase and mispronouncing it (cock-in-a-lady) it was a tongue in cheek refusal to be the little lady, setting my stall from the get go. No more apologising! LM: Your show is asking what happens if we maximise women instead of shrinking them. 2018 has brought a feminist reckoning, with things like #metoo and Times Up, women are taking up more space than ever and it’s incredible. Tell me how your show connects to what’s happening in feminism right now? AK: Just like the i rst vote in Britain being for women of privilege, this up-turn in i nding our voice is predominantly felt by the middle
110 THE LIST FESTIVAL 1–8 Aug 2018
Coccinellidae
classes. I’ve interviewed lots of women and many don’t feel maximised. The audio interviews are woven into the soundscape of the show. During all of this, I mainly throw myself round the stage, doing things that many women would never dream to do, like draw a face on my wobbly belly. The show celebrates our innate power, our bigness, our taking space. We need some optimism now to create change and on a small level, that’s what I hope the show will do. .........................................................................
Amanda Kellehner speaks to Miranda Prag, from This Is Just Who I Am, a critique of ‘seli e culture’.
AK: I love the premise of your show. We all get so pulled into the falsity of
the perfect projection of the seli e, how do you challenge this on stage? MP: I was thinking about the way we create these false identities for ourselves – the selves we want other people to see – and how these identities are essentially a ‘performance’ pretending to be authentic. And so that’s what This Is Just Who I Am is – a performance pretending not to be a performance. I parody myself, or a person like me – a white, middle class woman in her twenties – and poke fun at all the tactics we employ in the hope of appearing intelligent, well-informed, feminist, cool, fun etc. AK: Why did you choose to explore identity? MP: The internet has given us the means to project our ideal selves in countless different >>