To all the violent women…

**Warning: some minor spoilers below for our upcoming Pocketfull release**

‘I really didn’t want it to be this depressing “woe is me”, tiny violin moment. I think a lot of times predominantly, male written, female focused art work, very much becomes that.’ 

- Lucy

Arianna (Director) recently sat down with Héloïse Thual (Writer of Alice of Flesh) and Lucy Haslingden (Writer of Closest Companion) to talk about their pieces, and the reasons behind why they have been chosen to appear as part of a special. I was supposed to be at that meeting as well but traffic got in the way. Curse the M6 in rush hour! But on the positive side, this means that I get to watch back on the wonderful conversation they all had, and offer my opinion this way. 

Pocketfull up to this point has run as a series that brings together a collection of work from artists all across the country (and now the globe) in a celebration of the incredible talent they have. And this month's Pocketfulls are similar, Confession: The Hours, Closest Companion and Alice in Flesh, all showcase the amazing talent of our writers, actors and directors. But when we were reading submissions way back in December, we realised the three shared an awful lot of commonality. We don’t often programme Pocketfulls to be connected, explicitly or implicitly, but this seemed like too good of an opportunity to pass up. On top of this, they have become a celebration of female artists for this year's Women’s History month. So why did we pick them? 

‘Finding somehow a way to reverse the gaze, and finding some power in that, and to manipulate to some extent. Becoming the subject versus the object.’

- Héloïse

In their own ways, each piece explores how women are impacted by the society that they live in, and the role their relationship with the men around them plays in their experience. When myself and Arianna read them, we loved them all straight away, and had incredibly clear visions as to how we would stage them all. When asked by the writers Arianna explained, ‘From my point of view what drew me to directing those three was the way they portrayed the role of what we as women get given as a role within society. How we take it on and how that affects us. Like how sometimes it can feel empowering to just accept a role that men give us. And then actually when you reveal, or you understand that, it's not a choice, it's just something that you’re doing to cope. You realise: what does that actually leave you with?’ This is something I wholeheartedly agreed with. Throughout each monologue, there is a lack of control coming from the women. In Confession: The Hours she is confined by her stalker, whose opinion of her completely negates what she thinks of herself. In Closest Companion, regardless of the comfortability Isla, our protagonist, has with her life and actions, society has deemed her the ‘femme fatale’ (more on this later) and decided how she must feel about them. And in Alice in Flesh her father has pushed an image onto her, that she may once have been comfortable with, but actually has taken away her sense of self. In that first conversation it became very clear that the themes and perspectives these three pieces shared were so similar, yet varied, that presenting them as a trio was the strongest way to get their messages across. Funnily enough it turns out that the writers feel the same way we do. When discussing their initial ‘inspiration’ (I use the term loosely as none of the pieces have stemmed from one point) Lucy and Héloïse got onto the topic of stereotypes, and expectations of women within society, and how these manifest throughout the pieces. 

Lucy: ‘I really like the whole idea of presenting different takes on the way in which women are viewed, or women present themselves. When I was writing Closest Companion, I knew I wanted to write something about like slut shaming. I hate the term, but yeah. Or hook up culture, or casual sex and the implications for women that come from that. But I also knew I really didn’t want it to be this depressing “woe is me”, tiny violin moment. I think a lot of times predominantly, male written, female focused art work, very much becomes that.’ 

Héloïse: ‘Yeah there is something in yours, I really felt there was a violence brewing, even if it's the character against herself but also against the stereotypes.’

‘if you’re not a femme fatale you’re considered the standard Disney princess and that's not good either.’

- Arianna

I don’t know about you, but from my perspective most women within my life, consciously or subconsciously, are trying to push against the stereotypes that are put upon us. And while others sit very comfortably within them, there is still an air of it being your own choice. And yet, Arianna, Héloïse and Lucy kept returning to the idea of control, and how in control we can actually be, as women that move in modern society. And how far do we have to push it to not be in control. With this in mind, I found what Lucy and Héloïse go on to say next, very interesting.

Lucy: ‘I think that what all of the pieces do nicely is that they, in their own way, take something about the female existence or womanhood that maybe society or men view as this hyper feminine, potentially vulnerable or emotional act and they make it really brutal or really aggressive in their own sort of unique way.’

Héloïse: ‘There is definitely something in your play, you mention it as well in the opening sections, the archetype of the femme fatale and this kind of, like you said, phantasmagoric output that is put on the female by the male gaze, and actually all these characters play with it. Finding somehow a way to reverse the gaze, and finding some power in that, and to manipulate to some extent. Becoming the subject versus the object.’ 

The key word here for me is ‘aggressive’, the idea of the aggressive woman, being the most far removed from the male gaze. By being this you become the femme fatale, a symbol of everything a woman shouldn’t be. Instead of questioning why women feel the need to push themselves outside of the stereotypes put upon them, society views all who do, who may be deemed aggressive, or cold, or mean, as the ‘wrong type of woman’ and that there must be something inherently wrong with them, and not something wrong with the world that they live in. Arianna put it really well in the interview, ‘if you’re not a femme fatale you’re considered the standard Disney princess and that's not good either. It’s the idea that we can portray women in a certain way, but it’s so hard to make sure they balance out, and that it’s okay for everyone in society.’ Essentially whatever we do is not good enough. Be the femme fatale or don’t, either way society will find a problem with how you behave. The subject of the femme fatale became a key talking point for a large portion of the interview, and Lucy and Héloïse had some interesting things to say: 

Lucy: ‘I really love, and it comes back into the whole meat metaphor that's used in Alice in Flesh, the whole idea of the female body, and then within that the femme fatale and the dangerous lady, being a limited resource. And I think we get it a lot with women who have like ‘had it’ or are ‘too old’ or ‘been around the yard’ and are ‘used up’ especially, I think all the pieces do a really interesting job of the woman in them placing that upon something else, like the meat.’

‘…because women who are confident, are therefore women who are powerful. Because they’re women who don’t care about men's opinions.’

- Lucy

Lucy then goes on to discuss how she brought these ideas into Closest Companion, ‘One of the things I wanted to play with in Closest Companion is that idea that there are sometimes women out there who know exactly that they are ‘using themselves up’, or placing themselves in scenarios that are going to in some way degrade them in the eyes of others.’ And throughout her piece she does a really good job of making sure it is clear that these women don’t care. In their mind, they aren’t ‘using themselves up’ they’re just living their lives, and have long since given up on trying to convince society otherwise. Lucy and Héloïse go on to talk about how the femme fatale is presented today. 

Lucy: ‘The femme fatale sexy lady, is just a confident woman. They are used interchangeably by society because women who are confident, are therefore women who are powerful. Because they’re women who don’t care about men's opinions. And how that is then used to demonise and objectify those women, is something that I think is really well explored in the pieces.’

Héloïse: ‘What I find interesting in the evolution of the femme fatale, it's like in the 50’s movies. A femme fatale was always like a beautiful woman who put her own pleasure and own ambitions before others. But in these movies she was always somehow punished by the end for it. And the guy would end up with a more naive girl or someone who was always like playing to the stereotype of a good housewife. Then after you had movies with Sharon Stone in the early 2000’s. That changes the perspective of what actually is a femme fatale, and they are triumphant at the end. So I think the evolution itself of the femme fatale is quite interesting.’ 

Héloïse goes on to talk about how each piece in the trio creates the femme fatale character. In Confession: The Hours, the woman in question becomes a femme fatale  ‘because she puts her own safety and wellbeing before the one of her stalker’ and you understand exactly why she did what she did, and yet you know she is still going to be deemed as ‘crazy’ and ‘overreacting’. Héloïse goes on to say in both Closest Companion and Alice in Flesh, ‘It’s like women that are kind of certain on what they find pleasure in are still processing a bit of shame.’ Shame. All the pieces share a common feeling among women that, no matter how much we change our own perception, we will always feel the shame, or be expected to, by those around us. However, it is how we choose to present this shame and how we let it affect us (if it does at all) that allows us to feel in control. Héloïse rounded off her point by summing up the femme fatale in her mind and how the women within the monologues play into it, ‘Instead of being passive they are acting on their desires. Which I think is what the femme fatale does.’ And I don’t know about you, but that reads to me that, in a lot of ways, many of us could be considered the ‘femme fatale’ and actually, with its meaning having changed so much over the years in the way that Héloïse describes, and the femme fatales role within society having changed too. Nowadays, isn’t that feeling of ‘acting on our desires’, something we all strive to have? And funnily enough Lucy and Héloïse had the same question.  

Lucy: ‘We’re in this really interesting intersection at the moment, where we love them [the femme fatale] in our art but we hate them actually existing in society. We like them to be these imaginary made up characters, that we’ll never have to interact with, and will never actually bring any consequence to us. When in reality, they appear in the media because more women in society are becoming more and more like that.’

Héloïse: ‘I don’t know about you but I had a really good time writing the femme fatale type because obviously you know, Alice has a boldness and a kind of attitude that I wish I had more of.’ 

Lucy: ‘Yeah no absolutely.’

Héloïse: ‘It felt so free to actually just write it in a way that's like okay, she has a machete, and it's so sensational cause why not.’ 

Lucy: ‘Exactly. I want to make Closest Companion a reference point, because the things that Isla says in the piece are the things that are going off in my brain every single time I have these conversations with friends, or peers, or family members. I want to make it a reference point, so I can say, “I don’t want to explain it, so how about you watch this and this woman will”.’ 

I just want to linger on this part of the conversation for a moment. Both Lucy and Héloise took joy and pleasure in writing the femme fatale, and honestly I loved directing them, as did Arianna I’m sure. So why is it that we feel that the pieces will have more of an impact, and are more likely to be listened to, than ourselves? Surely, as the real women living in the world, with real opinions and experiences, our voices should be valued more? Sadly, this isn’t always the case.

‘I think there is room with every single one of [the pieces] for someone of a certain mindset to watch them and go, that woman is a bitch. That's a really good thing.’

- Lucy

For the most part we are held to a standard that we cannot reach. This has been mentioned multiple times so far, but it’s true. Either our expected role within society is so unrealistic that we’ll never please those who set them or we step outside of the boundaries given to us, and society has no place for us anymore. Even the role of the classic housewife, in current society, with all the external factors that come into play (the main being very few people can actually afford to be a one income household) we are set up to fail. How is it fair that the role of house management and child-care falls to me, when I may work the same hours, if not more than my partner? Simply put, it isn’t. But that doesn’t change the fact the expectation is still there. And I’d like to point out that I am aware that example doesn’t apply to everyone, and is coming from an observation of predominantly white heterosexual relationships. But regardless of whether you identify within those lifestyle ‘labels’, society will still try to put this role upon you, and demonise you for trying to declare that that's not you and that you don’t want it. A couple days ago, I came across a quote from Henrik Ibsen, that a woman had shared on Twitter, and I feel it is very relevant to everything that is being said here, and in turn everything, Confession: The Hours, Closest Companion and Alice in Flesh stand for. ‘A woman cannot be herself in modern society, with laws made by men and with prosecutors and judges who assess female conduct from a male standpoint.’ So to return to Lucy’s comment about how we love confident, femme fatale, women within our media, but not in our real lives, that's why a series of performances like the ones coming out this week are so important. We can’t be like the women in these pieces, because that is not what is expected of us, so let’s use art like this to represent us in the strongest way we possibly can. Lucy made an interesting comment that I think sums up the realisation that a lot of female artists go through. 

Lucy: ‘I think there is room with every single one of [the pieces] for someone of a certain mindset to watch them and go, that woman is a bitch. That's a really good thing. Because you are never going to please everybody and if you’re going to annoy anyone or upset anybody those are the kind of people you want to hate you. It comes back to that idea that we were talking about earlier of reclaiming that power. It's about making that decision for everyone else. You’re never going to please everyone, so who do I actually care about making happy?’ 

‘I always wonder: Where do I put this woman after? Who has released such violence and now has to go back to society.’

- Héloïse

And I think that's it really. Female artists create characters like those we see in Confession: The Hours, Closest Companion and Alice in Flesh because they’re an exertion of built up frustration. As women, we know we’d annoy, or enrage, too many people if we started spouting these ideas publicly, so we channel them into our creative practice. Because that frustration has to find an outlet, or else we’ll explode. And, from what I’ve observed, there comes a point in every woman’s life when she has to decide how she wants everyone around her to view her, and how she must limit herself to achieve that. I’ll leave you on a final note from our writers and Arianna about a similar idea: 

Lucy: ‘There’s a great line in Alice in Flesh that is: ‘Where do the violent women go?’ And I read it and loved it. And it leads into this description that conjures this mythological image in your mind, of these like incredibly powerful and beautiful women. And then I remember reading that moment and then thinking: Why does it seem so mythological? Why does it seem so creative and imagined and ‘out there’, because we view men like that all the time. It’s just a fascinating dilemma. ‘

Héloïse: ‘I think that’s really interesting because that line and this idea comes from The Bacchae. At the end of the Bacchae they commit this full crime of violence and obviously they come back from the trance and it’s like… I always wonder: Where do I put this woman after? Who has released such violence and now has to go back to society. So I’m glad that you thought it was mythical because that’s exactly where that’s coming from.’

Lucy: ‘And I guess within that… now my brain has gone rattling… there is, in all three of [the pieces], this shared idea of that once [the characters] have become the most basic, primal, violent, passionate, intense version of themselves, how do they then go back? How do they then re-morphe themselves into a version that is palatable and that is understandable and sympathetic for other people. That was a huge thing that I really wanted to deal with in Closest Companion. This idea that there’s nothing wrong with sex, and with casual sex, and with meaningless sex, but what is wrong is the implications that society places upon it. And that question that we ask of women, who want to do what is one of the most basic acts of human existence and do it with a level of freedom and control that men do. But how we we ask women to tame it back in ways that we don’t ask men to.’

Arianna: ‘I think there’s also something very, very real that we all feel growing up where you open that door. And it’s something very confusing because all of a sudden you are faced with all this like judgement from society, that you didn’t realise you already kind of had from before. And then all of a sudden you have to balance your own curiosity in this new act, or new emotion, with all of the judgement that’s coming in. I just think that it’s something… it’s very fascinating because it’s so real for I think most of us. One of the things that drew me to these three pieces is that they all portray that so well and it’s so delicate. It’s a very specific feeling, of wanting to grow yourself but growing into new areas of societal, or male, judgement, that’s unique.’

Where do violent women go? Where do honest women go? Women who know themselves, or their desires, or their emotions. I can’t promise that the next three Pocketfull’s answer those questions, but they certainly might help you start to. I sure know they’ve got my brain going. 

Liv x