Oddly enough when I sat down at my laptop a few minutes ago to start writing this, the default language had somehow been changed to French. Maybe Jeu Jeu was playing a trick on me…?

I’ve just completed a mini-tour of ‘Jeu Jeu la Foille’s Testy Manifesto’, and now that the props are packed away, the costumes are washed, the invoices have been paid, and the thank you’s have been written, it’s time to do some emotional unpacking.

I am DELIGHTED with how the show has developed. It’s now in a place that’s better than I could have imagined or hoped for. I have performed the entire thing, with full theatrics, three times in the last two weekends, and four times in total. I began writing it in 2019, did four WIP performances from November 2019 to March 2021, and a scaled back version in September 2021. It feels very old, but I still feel very new to it, if that makes sense.

I returned to the script on an extremely hot day in July, fresh from a week’s residency with my favourite theatre company: Gecko. Spending five sweaty days working in such a physical, ensemble-based way opened me up to some new possibilities with the words, or maybe I had been changed, cleansed in some way. Gecko work a lot with a full expression and range of emotions, all accessed through the breath, and played out to their maximum through the body, in a way that was playful, and at times slightly traumatic. I was in a good place to return to the text I had written what seemed like so long ago, but now I was different. No longer shy or scared of big emotions, letting them rise up authentically and float away, allowing the movements to emerge, breathing, always breathing, searching for a balance between precision and freedom.

There is still much work to do, but I am starting to find my boldness, and it’s coming from a centred, grounded place. I’ve noticed that my hands don’t shake as much when I’m onstage, though I am as nervous as ever. I’m going to give a breakdown for each of the three performances; how they went, the feedback I received, what they cost me, and what they’ve made me realise I need to work on next.

Yes, next! I thought I might pack this show in early, as writing it and making was such a wrestling match with myself. The pandemic slowed things down, and I began to prioritise my physical and mental health in 2020/2021. Just performing ’Testy Manifesto’ for the first time at Guilford Fringe July 2021, and having my family there, felt like enough. I had done it, and I had nice photos to show for it.

But the show works, people like it, and I enjoy performing it, so I’m carrying on. The rest of this year and into next year is a period of experimentation for me. I’m going to work more intentionally on my design skills, which fell by the wayside over the past few years as I concentrated on writing. I have an idea for a third solo show, which will be my final one as Jeu Jeu…probably.

Ventnor Fringe
I just knew as soon as I saw the pretty park in Ventnor, with the colourful tent that I would be performing in that it would be fun. Their slogan is ‘Keep Ventnor Weird.’ There is no way to get to the Isle of Wight without going on a ferry. I hadn’t been there since I was 11. I was excited.

It cost me £70 to register, which included the venue hire and tech person, and once I’d paid for an AirBnb for three nights, so I could have a little holiday there too, the total cost of this fringe was £300. I decided to go flyer-less and keep all of my publicity digital. I saw that Ventnor Fringe had printed out a picture of Tempest Rose – another burlesque performer – and included my show details below it on their billboard. This was a bit of an oversight on their part, and I hope no one came to my show expecting to see Tempest.
My tech was on the Saturday afternoon, the performance was a few hours later at 6pm. I was surprised that 19 people had pre-booked, and even more so when at least 25 people showed up to watch – including a sweet dog. The audience were lovely, they actually laughed. At the start of the show I give an introduction in French, and then remove my beret and eye-patch and start speaking in English. A man in the front row said ‘Oh, thank God!’ when this happened.

The raised stage was a bit awkward to get around, and maybe the performance wasn’t as smooth as I would’ve liked. At one point I was carrying the skeleton around the chairs in the centre to place him on them, and I clunked him on the lights behind me. A while ago I had bought a beautiful vintage perfume bottle to use, not realising that it could only be stored upright, and it leaked very expensive Opium perfume all over my suitcase and the props inside. The smell was quite overpowering.

Several audience members who I didn’t know approached me after the performance, to say how much they liked it. There were words like ‘bold’ and ‘inspiring.’ I received a text message that said ‘Your performance was a treasure box of rich expressions.’ Two young women came up to express their thanks and say they’d never thought about Barbie in that way. One more elderly man gave me his feedback in French. I couldn’t understand it all, but I know he talked a lot about his heart.

People comment a lot on the dialogue I have with the skeleton at the start, it seems to really set the tone and provide a way into what a normal conversation with an abusive person sounds like. I never wanted to be preachy with this show in a kind of ‘Hey guys, domestic abuse is bad’ sort of way. My intention was to show victimisation, without being a victim. This was one my main sticking points with the show – how to be personal and authentic but separate enough from the story so it doesn’t become confessional, and yet still move an audience. I think I have achieved this.

Camden Fringe
This fringe happens over a whole month, in multiple theatres throughout North London. I’ve done it twice before with my theatre company The Mist: We Are Not Cakes, but not for a few years. This time I was at the Hen and Chickens in Islington, which is a place I love. A cute 50-seater above a pretty pub in a nice part of London.

The registration fee was £99, but the venue and tech were not included, so I paid another £300 on top, taking the total cost to around £500 for two nights. As a former Londoner I know plenty of people there, and so didn’t need to pay for accommodation. Sadly not many people were able to come, and my audiences were small. I did get the second performance filmed though, which was my main reason for taking it to London so my friend Ana Morphic could film, and I’m seeing this as a steppingstone. There’ll be a trailer made, and I’m hoping this will pique more curiosity.

Looking through all the other shows on offer during Camden Fringe, I also realised that I’d priced myself far lower than most other companies. The Hen and Chickens normally make you pay a £1.50 membership fee, and so I’d set my tickets at £8.50, as I didn’t want anyone to pay more than £10. I didn’t realise that they waive this for the fringe, so I could’ve set the price a bit higher. The theatre also take 25% of ticket sales revenue, so it’s safe to say I’ve nowhere near broken even. I don’t expect to make money or get paid, but I always hope not to lose money. I did as much as I could to publicise, I’m just one person with limited means, and I did my best. I wrote to all the publications with my press release, and although I kept my flyers digital, I did print out a few for the venue. I remember when I did Brighton Fringe a few years ago, I got flyers printed and went there a few weeks before to distribute them in as many pubs, venues, cafes and shops as would allow. I got good audiences then, and maybe flyering is worth the time, money and steps. It always seems like such a waste of paper to me, but I can see how it could make a difference now.

I was really happy with my performances, especially the Sunday night one – but I have yet to watch the video back. The real bonus was talking to the audience afterwards, some of whom were friends, and others strangers. They all had a lot of profound thoughts and questions. Many asked about what the cave story at the end meant, and what the tricycle, rose and frog represented. And I told them, though it is too personal to share here.

Overwhelmingly the response was that I’d managed to build and release the tension expertly. There was a delicate balance between what was heart-wrenching and moments when the audience could laugh. The French character, Jeu Jeu the Revolutionary, narrates the story and appears four times; “Bonjour encore, C’est moi!”, the music also provides breaks, and a chance to process what has been said. My friend T who saw the show twice had some really interesting points to make on the idea of the skeleton being ‘a body with no body’ and the way that they pass Barbie’s small naked body around, touching and controlling her. She later wrote in a text to me; ‘You play with what is there and not there, the absences within a presence.’ Wanda the Wandering Womb was a hit as ever, I am planning a little spin-off poetry set for her.

The subject matter hits home – pun intended – it’s pretty damn relevant topic. What I need to do now is upgrade the props, work with a director, play a bit with lighting, and figure out how I can attract more audiences. With ‘Frontal Lobotomy’ I made changes to the writing during the Edinburgh run and into the 2017 tour, and again for the 2019 revival. For this one I don’t feel the need to change anything, I have achieved what I set out to do in terms of the piece, what it needs now is some polish and more people to see it.

This was an almighty beast of a blog, I hope that someone finds it useful one day.

With love and sunflowers,

JJlF xx
​
PS: Our performances at the end of the Gecko Residency were filmed. You can check them out at this link if you’d like.
https://youtu.be/xrS2YSd4XRc
 

On Saturday 30th April I had the honour and pleasure of seeing a 30 ft wicker man being set alight for a Beltain celebration, and it was quite honestly one of the most spectacular things I have ever witnessed. It made me think of that quotation, something along the lines of; ‘Life isn’t measured by how many breaths you take, but how many moments take your breath away.’ I thought about other moments in my life that I could truly call ‘awesome’, and about the real meaning of awe. I don’t think we can ever really experience awe without a tiny bit of fear. Awesome does not mean ‘great’, awesome means the extent of that magic is both terrifying and amazing. I must stop calling everything ‘awesome’, and I also must stop saying that everything terrifies me, because it doesn’t.

I finished writing the play. It’s the strangest writing I’ve ever done, and that’s saying something. For the past two years I have been methodically recording my dreams. When I wake from a dream I reach for my phone and make a voice memo of everything I can remember. Then when I have a collection of about ten recordings, I transcribe the dreams pretty much word for word into a notebook. During the recordings I’m often thinking ‘This makes no sense at all’, but I’ve often been surprised at how coherent I am, and the images, symbols and people that recur. Once I got into a habit of this ritual my dreams came thick and fast; my subconscious knew I was listening.

During some covid induced self-isolation time, I sifted through my dream diaries, made separate notes, then constructed these into short scenes, pieces of dialogue and poetic passages. I became fascinated by these liminal spaces that dreams describe so well, and I thought about how so many important moments in life are about crossing thresholds, and about how uncomfortable and confronting uncertainty is. I took the song titles of Taylor Swift’s album ‘Red’ and named each scene with a song, then I cut up all the scenes and arranged them into an order. I called the play ‘Grey Area.’

The feedback I’ve received so far has included words such as ‘vivid’, ‘wild’, ‘scary’, ‘beautiful.’ It is the stuff of nightmares, and I really had to dig deep to find it. Staring at a blank page for several months was a bit of a worry, but it needn’t have been because I did most of the work while I was asleep! It reminds me of a story that was read aloud to us at LISPA. I can’t remember it fully, but it was about two animals on a boat, and one tells the other to go to sleep while they create. Then they wake up the other animal who tells them what they see. It’s something to do with taking the rational mind away so that creation can happen – I wish I could find that story again now.

At the start of April I hosted a local talent night at the Winchester Theatre Royal, which is something I’d never done before in that capacity, and I could’ve so easily have turned down the offer and suggested several other people who I knew would do a better job. But I did do it, I did it pretty well, and I enjoyed it too. I performed the extract of ‘Frontal Lobotomy’ that I’ve done so many times, but has not been in front of a live audience since 2019. I think being ‘warm’ from the hosting helped me out, and it was the best performance of that material I’ve ever done. I needed that. Apart from a few open mics, I’ve not done much performing for the past six months, the focus has been on teaching and writing. And I was fine with that.

‘Testy Manifesto’ is coming out of the suitcase this summer. I’m performing as part of Camden Fringe in August, and there are a few other dates still to be confirmed. I haven’t begun rehearsing yet, but I’m preparing, getting fit and healthy, clearing the decks. I’m looking forward to going back to the text, seeing what has changed in me since I last performed it in September. I don’t think I will make many drastic changes, but I know there is more to find. That show is a slow burner, it took so long to write, longer to stage, and I was paralysed with fear right up until it got birthed at Guildford Fringe last July. I think I can hold it with a looser grip now.

I received some news this week that took my breath away, and not in the good sense. I have been trying to process it, and dashing off a few written lines when I feel too sad to dance and sing is the only way I can. Here is a poem for C.
​
Have you seen the email they asked
I read it, I dreaded it
Scrolling down the thread
I didn’t want to cry
You’d lost your left eye
Air rifle bullet lodged in your brain
Stopped in my tracks
Why does art imitate life
The synchronicity almost mocks
And the shock was enough
To blow my mind
Bad choice of words
But what can you say
Other than that I’m glad you failed
Your teacher is glad you failed
 
Give everyone you love an extra-long cuddle today.
JJlF xxx
 
 

Blog posted on patreon January 2022.

Did I actually do anything besides work, drive, eat and sleep since I wrote the last blog? My diary says I did go out, and I did do creative stuff, but the period between getting home from work and going to bed got shorter and shorter. I’m going to a poetry evening and the theatre this week, and I’m just hoping I can stay awake past 9pm.

Any spare energy I have left over from teaching has gone into writing the play I got commissioned for last year. I’m about a third of the way through, and sent a first draft off last week. I’ve never written for anyone else but me, and I wonder how I even managed to churn out two solo shows. The next deadline looms, and writing this blog has helped clear some debris and get me moving in the past; maybe it will work again.

I’ve begun the application process for a couple of fringe festivals to take ‘Testy Manifesto’ to in the Summer, when perhaps the increased daylight will make me more Social Butterfly, and less Grouchy Bear. Doing those applications triggered a couple of old injuries – just niggly aches – from absolutely nowhere, and I wondered what my body was trying to tell me. I now feel stronger, healthier and more peaceful than I have in years, but that little muscle in my left arm, and the other little muscle behind my right shoulder blade wanted a word about my self-doubt. They’ve quietened down now, and I’m still listening.

I was on the RADIO in November, talking with fellow poets Issa and Damian about lovely ARTISTIC THINGS with host Andy Bungay, this is the mixcloud link if you have a spare few hours to listen! Saturday 27th Nov: Solent Special (extended) ft Victoria Jeu, Issa Loyan Farrah, Damian O'Vitch by Andy Bungay | Mixcloud The conversation was broad and lively, and I spent a lot of it laughing.

The ‘Frontal Lobotomy’ film got finished, and it will be unleashed at some point. It was quite a reckoning watching it back, and I put it off for weeks. I needn’t have worried as I think we met our goal of capturing the show as more than just a filmed performance, and using some of the jiggery-pokery that cameras, lighting and editing can bring to the experience. One of my goals for 2022 is to record an audio version of the book I published last year – then I really will have rinsed that show for all it’s worth.

Speaking of goals, I’ve made a great many for this year, that I will aim to achieve, but with no real attachment to whether they happen or not. One thing that wasn’t on the list though, was something I’ve been practising through my teaching since September. I made the decision to avoid immediately giving my students the answers to questions or solutions to problems when they asked, and give them space to figure it out for themselves. I decided to put my own ego and tastes aside on what I think constitutes good theatre, or a productive rehearsal, and meet them where they’re at. Basically, I stopped trying to control the outcome, and it’s taken me twenty years of being a teacher to get comfortable with that. It means that all the progress is taking longer than I would want it to, but it’s making each day, each interaction, more meaningful.

Last Winter in a therapy session, I said something to my counsellor which I thought was so lame at the time. I said that all the trees and the ground look so dead at this time of year, but that under the surface things were starting to move and grow, and that just because we can’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

I wrote a poem based on a Winter photograph not long ago. It has a rather wholesome story behind why I wrote it, but the poem itself could not be more bleak and ominous. I quite like it.
​
With love,
Grouchy Bear xx
 
Taut trunks elongate
Punctate space
In alien net of hanging breath
The road less travelled
A lone figure makes liminal traverse
A war of two worlds
Silently regarded amidst rotten leaves
Tiny branches imprison
Death surrounds
Death hovers
And static web draws the darkening of the dark


Image from Dave Clamp

Blog written and published on Patreon October 2021

Something deliciously clandestine and geeky has been taking place in my world since late July. Myself and a bunch of local poets have been meeting up in an independent bookshop after hours, to write poetry about Winchester, under the tutelage of Jonny Fluffypunk, who is the resident poet for Winchester Poetry Festival this year. We often started the workshops by writing several poems, consisting of six lines, in just over a minute, with a titles given by Jonny. We wrote poems about the places, memories and moods of Winchester, and we shared whatever we had written that we hated the least. I’ve loved it, and have been surprised by what I clung to about Winchester; my birthplace, home of my grandparents, and the place I spent nearly all of the school holidays in growing up….followed by a twenty year gap whereby I did all of my ‘important years’ in London, having little to do with the place. Now it is my home again, and I’ve been able to rediscover it in a way that I don’t hate.

I took August off. Went to Edinburgh to visit friends and climbed a mountain, house-sat for another friend in Hampstead Heath and ate too much cheese, supported some local music events, got to know a very tall man…I described the feeling to him of performing ‘Testy Manifesto’ in July like all the clogs inside me clunking into place, like finally turning a corner, like two and a half years of struggling with PTSD finally making sense.
In the last blog I wrote that the friend I had shown a very early version of the full ‘Manifesto’ to in Yorkshire had asked if I would ever be prepared to do the show without the costumes and theatrical stuff. I got that opportunity in September, when I did a stripped back version of the show for the Veg Out Cafe in October Books in Southampton. Lots of people came, and I was not expecting them to be so transfixed on me as they put vegan food into their mouths. A lovely lady who I had met the month before came and spoke to me afterwards. She said something so beautiful about being defined but not controlled by events from the past. Another lady who I didn’t know asked me what one of the stories was about. I asked her what it meant for her; saying that I could tell you but it would seem so silly to define it with a particular meaning. She said for her it was about transmutation. I said yes, that’s exactly what it was about. And it was.

In October last year I asked for my bloodstained sheets from the night I was beaten up by my abusive ex boyfriend to be returned to me from the police station, where they had been in custody for over a year. I boil washed them three times, and then cut them up and dyed them lovely colours, out of which I sewed bags and fabric roses. Some of the stains wouldn’t come out, and I burned these scraps on a Halloween bonfire, along with the rest of the paper trail from that time. I’ve gifted those bags and flowers to people over this past year, never telling of their original source, but knowing that I turned something hateful and painful to see again, into something pretty AND useful - everyone needs a bag for something! And then I watched the stains that wouldn’t go get burned up.

The story the lady I asked about wasn’t about my crafternoons however, it was about another transmutational moment from well after that time ended. But I am a private person; despite how personal my performances seem, and how confessional this writing is, very few people really know.

I did a few poems from ‘Frontal Lobotomy’ at The Railway the other week, and as the trial of Sarah Everard had been in the news, I included the ‘One Who Got Away’ which was about a very scary night I had when I lived in London and was walking home. I was accosted by three sets of men, all with differing levels of threat, and it shook me up. Circumstances aligned and I left London not long afterwards. A man in the audience spoke to me after the gig about a friend of his who had been murdered on Seven Sisters Road, which the poem mentions, and he had thought that the poem was about her. I told him that it was about something which happened to me, but I got away. He said ‘Well my friend didn’t.’ And seeing the pain and struggle in him as he told me about this awful thing, which had happened four years ago, really moved me and made me realise a few things.

Some of my words are powerful, and I have no way of knowing what affect they have anyone listening, unless they tell me.
Time is irrelevant when getting over a trauma.
Violence against women affects men.

 I agreed to a hug, apologised for triggering a bad memory, and asked him how he would be able to move on from this. He said ‘I’m so sorry that happened to you.’ I didn’t tell him about the domestic abuse, that was beyond the scope of an outside the pub conversation.

And then in stark contrast, I took part in the Mayflower MAST Studios ‘Festival of Loveliness’ 48 hour challenge, over the second weekend in October. Ten artists met for the first on the Friday night, we were split into three groups and then devised a piece that was performed on the Sunday night. I was nervous about working with new people, but the group I worked with were delightfully silly, and I was so proud of what we managed to produce with the provocation of the word ‘Home.’ And so massively impressed with the work of the other two groups. Lovely people and fortifying creativity. Working as a solo artist for so long…well it’s convenient, but it’s lonely and limiting. I discovered a lot about the way I like to work over that weekend; the need to find my pleasure, how I like to run things through to find the natural timing, how important it is to not be afraid to be weird, how authenticity will always trump perfection.
​
 Being where I am, and wowed as ever with how beautiful Autumn is.
 JJlF xx
 
 
 

I think I have used the above quotation in these blogs before…never mind, it bears repeating.
​
A poet friend I was chatting to yesterday described what I do as a combination of cabaret and live art. I’d confessed that no one seems to see me as ‘a proper poet.’ It’s true, even at the poetry open mics I perform at I’m usually introduced as a burlesque performer. There I am, no props, regular clothes, reading from a folder like all the other poets, and still a clown. The odd ball complex follows me no matter what tribe I try to belong to, and I think maybe I am ok with that now.

Ah, dear reader, I am so happy, so relieved, so grateful. I performed the full version of ‘Jeu Jeu la Foille’s Testy Manifesto’ this past Saturday at The Star Inn in Guildford, and it could not have gone better. After two years of wrestling with that show, trying to make it make sense, wondering what the point of it all was…it’s out, and it’s not bad either – I’m very proud of it.

I remembered the advice I was given just before my very first burlesque performance, when I was quaking with fear backstage, and my friends found me, hugged me, and said ‘Just have fun.’ But how the shit can a show about domestic abuse be FUN? That was something I couldn’t fathom two weeks ago. How can something so terrible, be beautiful? It’s still a long way from being the comfortable, elasticated trousers that ‘Frontal Lobotomy’ is, but fun was had for sure.

The feedback I have received so far has been very positive. Audience members that know me personally have said that in places it was heart-wrenching, as they knew the backstory, they knew it was true, even though I’ve left a lot of the details out. People have commented on the conversation I have with the skeleton near the start, asking if that was based on a real discussion I had with the perpetrator. The actual subject of the conversation was made up, but the way it is written is very effective for demonstrating what it sounds like to talk to an abusive person – utterly absurd and crazy-making.

I play several different characters, and one that people seemed to enjoy was a woman who enters in disguise, and begins talking about ‘her friend’ who is experiencing domestic abuse. She becomes so impassioned that her disguise slips off, and she’s left on the floor, raw and exposed. I had so much fun working with this character that I pulled a muscle in my arm during rehearsals.

No one seemed to mind that in four sections of the show I am speaking in French. I love my revolutionary character; she lends the political angle, she narrates the personal story from outside, and she stops the energy from flagging. It doesn’t matter if the audience don’t understand every word, she is a lot of fun, and there is more to find with her.

Thinking about it, the three moments or characters I have mentioned above all came from ideas other people had upon reading a draft of the script, seeing a scratch performance, or playing with an idea in a workshop. It may be a solo show, but it wasn’t made in isolation. Even the seemingly innocuous comments people made during my process have been mulled over, developed, put down, picked up again…they’ve swum around my brain for two years as invisible collaborators and provocateurs. It’s the sweat, graft and pulled muscles that are mine.

However, the thing that really excites me about this show is that there is a possibility I could perform it for some women’s groups. A friend of my mums who was in the audience last week works for the probation service, and has contacts in some domestic abuse agencies. It could be seen by the people it was written for - other survivors. I did an interview with SATEDA recently that I’ll include below; they asked good questions, and my answers give a bit more background to the show, why I wrote it, and the difficulties I had making it. SATEDA and Solace Women’s Aid are the two of the many DA agencies I reached out to over the last Winter, when I was writing a funding application, and although the bid wasn’t successful, we’ve remained in contact, and I’m grateful for their support.

No other performances of ‘Testy Manifesto’ are scheduled, as nothing is certain with the pandemic, but I have 200+ photos of this one (courtesy of Jon Ellis) and a lovely afterglow to bask in for now.

‘A little rain never hurt no one.’

With love and thunderstorms,
JJlF xx
 
Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do. 
What I do tends to take many forms, but primarily I’m a writer and a teacher, with a focus on puppetry and poetry. I lead a strange and scandalous double life as Jeu Jeu la Foille, who is my performance persona, and she allows my more serious and studious side to take a back seat now and then.
I have an endless fascination and curiosity for pretty much everything, the more fantastical the better, and the only thing that seems to slow me down is being in or near water.
What are your biggest influences?  
From 2010 to 2019 I was a burlesque performer, and an added bonus of that was getting to see all sorts of cabaret and variety performance, and meeting a whole tribe of like-minded weirdos, who continue to inspire and challenge me. I trained as a clown and mime artist at a physical theatre school, so I’m drawn to performance styles on the circus/immersive/non-traditional spectrum.
But without a doubt, my biggest influence is Tom Waits, and were it not for him I may have never found my voice an artist and written my first solo show ‘Jeu Jeu la Foille’s Frontal Lobotomy.’
According to your blog post, the story behind Testy Manifesto was derived from personal experience. What inspired you to share it? 
Going through an experience with intimate partner violence was the most harrowing and transformative thing that has ever happened to me. While I was in it my only goal was to survive and get through each day. When it finally ended – four non-molestation orders, three court appearances, two house moves and countless police interviews later – I was left with a lot of emotional pain, and so many questions. Why did this happen to me? Why does this happen to so many people? Any why isn’t everyone talking about it?
I began writing ‘Testy Manifesto’ in the spring of 2019, starting with little poems, as a way of staying grounded and processing it, and that gradually developed into the performance it is now. Since then lots more has happened in the public sphere with regard to domestic abuse and people are talking about it more openly; this spurred me on and kept me going when I was floundering and nothing I was creating seemed to make any sense.
I’ve ended up with a poetic treatment of my experiences with intimate partner violence, that encompasses activism, storytelling and some moments that I hope reveal the sides of victimhood we don’t usually see. There is also the healthy dose of irony, irreverence and silliness that Jeu Jeu is known for.
What were the obstacles you had to overcome when creating this performance? 
You mean apart from breaking down in tears every time I tried to write or rehearse any of it?! There was a lot of stickiness to move through, a great deal of mental wrestling. Words are extremely powerful, and I’ve had to remind myself to stay playful with the material, and not try to pre-empt or mitigate the audiences experience of it. Friends and family that saw the in-progress performances or read the script have found it hard to take, as I did such an Oscar-winning performance of pretending everything was fine while the abuse was happening. The challenge has been to keep it as personal and authentic as possible, without being too preachy, prescriptive or graphic, but still take risks and push myself as a creator. I’ve dubbed it my ‘difficult second album.’
Is there any healing advice you would like to share with SATEDA’s audience? 
For survivors I’d say give it time and be extremely gentle with yourself. I was so impatient with my recovery, I used to think ‘Well there’s no immediate danger anymore, so why haven’t I pinged back to my normal happy, busy self already?’ It really doesn’t work like that. I found attending the Freedom Program and reading the accompanying book ‘Living with the Dominator’ very helpful to combat the isolation and shame I felt initially, and for the past eighteen months I’ve regularly seen a counsellor who has knowledge of domestic abuse. Most importantly I’d say, find your joy – it’s an opportunity to focus on yourself and discover what truly lights you up, in whatever way that’s possible for you.
Could you share with us your website and social media links, as well as performance dates? 
I’m sharing the complete ‘Testy Manifesto’ at Guildford Fringe on Saturday 24th July in the afternoon. Booking link here: Jeu Jeu la Foille’s Testy Manifesto « Guildford Fringe Festival
Facebook: www.facebook.com/lafoille
Instagram: @jeujeulafoille
Twitter: @JeuJeulaFoille
Website: www.jeujeulafoille.com   My blog is  Jeu Jeu la Foille - Nowhere to go but everywhere    and there you can read more on my process on making the show, and some of the backstory to it, as well as other poems I’ve written which aren’t part of ‘Testy Manifesto.’
 
 

I’m writing this from the kitchen table of the rehearsal space I have been eating, sleeping and working in for the past four days. The arched windows and wooden floor almost make it feel like a church, and I have watched the sunrise over the spectacular hills every morning, before dancing around ALL THE SPACE…..So read the opening of the blog I started writing a few days ago. It was at this point that my friend came into barn rehearsal space I was working in, and we had a three hour discussion on the damage that the patriarchy inflicts, on men. So I’m continuing this from my home, after conquering the M1, and finally getting to see some live performance this weekend.

In the last blog I think I had just finished a creative writing workshop, and was trying to create a new piece of writing for ‘Testy Manifesto.’ I had decided to cut two poems that were more explicitly about domestic abuse, that I have performed live and to camera, and substitute them for a longer piece about Paris, that was in answer to a book I read a while ago on urban drifting. The poems felt too direct and personal, and a bit preachy. Something I learned from the creative writing workshop, that with autobiographical writing, sometimes what you leave out, is just as important as what you leave in.

I ran the complete show for my friend in Yorkshire. It’s only 45 minutes long, but I was tired and sweaty afterwards. They gave me lots of useful feedback, asked questions on things that I hadn’t even considered, and gave me their full support and presence. I filmed the performance and watched it back the following day. And the overriding feeling was that I could be having way more fun, I could be owning it far more, I could be less stiff and more charming. I have a lot of work to do in the next few weeks before the show in Guildford, and I know that no matter how many times I rehearse, the show doesn’t exist without an audience. It’s hard to find the pleasure when there are no other people in the room. The enjoyment I feel when I perform ‘Frontal Lobotomy’ only came after I had performed the show many times, I was still able to summon it up for the live streams I did in February, but that’s only because I have already learned how to have fun with that show.

I often say flippant things about ‘Frontal Lobotomy’, saying it’s about Tom Waits and experimental brain surgery, and glossing over the deeper, more personal truth underneath the trappings and troupes of cabaret and the music I love. No I didn’t plagiarise Tom Waits, I wrote it in answer to his words, music and character, from the place I was at in my life at the time. And if you scratch the surface there is something much more messy and raw underneath, I think some people might sense that, but no one can tell what is me and what is Tom, and that’s deliberate.

‘Testy Manifesto’ is much more exposing, and I do still take clothes on and off, Jeu Jeu is a semi-retired burlesque performer after all. But there is no one to hide behind now, no Tom Waits filter obscuring the view, though Tom subtly makes his presence known at points. The words are risky, the images are riskier. Writing and rehearsing this show for the past two years has been like constantly beating myself on the head with a stick. I just want it out and done. I’d like to perform it more than once, then maybe I will start to enjoy the beatings. I’m impatient for the days when it just feels like fun. I hope I get there.

The friend I shared my progress with last week asked me if I would ever consider performing the show as purely a spoken word piece, without the costumes and puppets. I asked myself if it would it stand up on its own, just words, and am I just using the other elements as yet another filter? It would be interesting to try it stripped back, but not yet, I’m still not ready to give up the props.

I’d like to share a poem I wrote off the cuff and shared with a small group of friends last month. We all wrote our own poems, with prompts from the poetry Ouija board that I made for a workshop interaction piece a few days earlier. You move the planchette together across the squares, and when you land on a square that square has a poetry prompt, that you all write individually. I remember that sharing our poems that evening was a very special and quiet moment, in amongst an almost constant soundtrack of laughing and singing.

With love,
JJlF xx
 
Spicy mulled wine sipped from heatproof glasses
Creamy drips melt and slide
Gingham ribbons flutter from branches
The pomegranate stone she looks at me
Victoriously, gloriously, uproariously
 

I have been writing these blogs for what seems like a very long time now, and each one starts with a quotation, which often has nothing to do with what I’ve chosen to write about in the blog. It’s usually something from a book I’ve been reading, something I’ve heard on a podcast that week, something from a meme shared on the socials. Nevertheless it still resonated, somewhere, and the right quotation always makes itself known.

I’ve become conscious of letting things unfold as they should both this and last month, not just rushing to fill the gaps, and many unexpected gifts have presented themselves. A year after the world ground to a halt, I finally learned how to slow down a bit.

Last month I travelled to Leeds to work with a good friend, and we made a film of ‘Frontal Lobotomy.’ He is a terrific artist, and a Wonderful Cynical Northerner, and something he said has stuck with me: ‘I’m open to all kinds of theatre, as long as its short and competent.’ I made a kind of process film of us making the film by sticking my ipad on record in the corner, and watching that back was quite an eye-opener – I am very hard on myself when I get things wrong. But my show is short, I am competent, the process was joyful, and I have every faith the result will be beautiful.

​I took part in an insightful online workshop this month in autobiographical storytelling, led by Jonathan Young, who was one of my teachers at LISPA. It allowed me to properly consider for the first time where ‘Jeu Jeu la Foille’s Testy Manifesto’ is set, the timescale unfolds over, and why I’m even telling this story in the first place. I went back and re-read a chapter from ‘Flaneuse’ by Lauren Elkin, which inspired the French-speaking character from the show, and I pulled out these lines from her chapter on Paris, where she describes how when walking the streets, she feels drawn to seeing the paving stones being dug up, and thinks of all the bloody revolutions that have taken place there…

‘I get a thrill from seeing them again…What drives a person to dig their fingers into the crust of Paris…Parisians tend to write more about what’s disappeared than what’s still visible…Traces of the past city are, somehow, traces of the selves we might once have been…I am always looking for ghosts on the boulevards…Most of the meaningful moments of my life have taken place here…Places remember events…Presenting a serene face to the world, in spite of all this revolting and murdering…Discord simmering…Façadisme…A doorway to nowhere…No one guessed at my disguise…A culture struggling to redefine itself against the blood-soaked Place de la Revolution…Fixated on the female body as a tool for instilling certain values in the heart of the New Republic…It is the condition of the historian to be constantly picturing the past, thrilled and obsessed by it, without for one moment wanting to be part of it…As difficult as it is to conceive of events happening on the other side of the world, it is just as hard to comprehend what is happening in your backyard, or even in front of your own eyes.’

Paris has become the setting for ‘Testy Manifesto.’ In the 1800’s there was an uprising every 20 years or so, where the streets literally ran with blood and the bodies were piled high. Nothing really changed in terms of structure and systems, but voice was given to the grievances, and the revolutionary spirit remains, etched forever in the paving stones.

I will not SOLVE domestic abuse with this show, I won’t put an end to extreme misogyny, but I will give voice to something that happened to me, and that has changed me forever.

‘…the greatest and most important problems of life are all in a certain sense insoluble…They can never be solved, but only outgrown.’ Carl Jung

All is not lost. The domestic abuse bill has finally gone through. Boris Johnson acknowledged on national television that domestic abuse was a reason to break lockdown restrictions. The Sarah Everard tragedy has prompted conversations and practical solutions on women’s safety. And I will continue to kick and scream, and no I will not shut up. Deal with it.

A colleague called my work ACTIVISM. Nah, it’s just poems and puppets. Tom Waits said ‘I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.’ And I’ve been thinking more and more that maybe that is my core value as an artist…TERRIBLE THINGS…but presented with charm, smut, irony, idiocy, and competency. And under an hour.

​See for yourself…I’m presenting the fullest version I can muster of ‘Jeu Jeu la Foille’s Testy Manifesto’ at The Back Room of The Star Inn in Guildford on Saturday 24th July at 3pm. As ever, I’m holding the thrill and the dread of this in equal importance.

Your loving idiot,
​
Jeu Jeu la Foille xx
 

I have been exhausted and exhilarated by the month of March. I’ve had busy months before, but I can’t remember a time where I have had so many new things thrown at me, in such a short space of time. February was pretty crazy too.

The other night I shared a new half hour version of ‘Testy Manifesto’ for Moving Voices on zoom. I’ve performed versions of that show three times, but those were to live audiences, this was the first time I’ve done a TM online performance. Lots to work on, lots to consider, what an honour that was. Afterwards a lady in the audience asked to meet properly my puppet Wanda the Wandering Womb. I was very proud to show Wanda’s little tiara, her big eyelashes. The lady said; “That’s what I imagine my womb to look like.”

In February I did two live streamed performances of ‘Frontal Lobotomy.’ I had forgotten what adrenaline felt like. It was so weird to perform that show in my living room, knowing that people were there but I couldn’t see them. And somehow even more pertinent; because we were all in the middle of covid-winter lockdown, so isolated, swimming in the mess of our own thoughts, wondering if we would ever see light again. I know it brought comfort to a few people, and that was a beautiful thing. I had a A BALL, I made A MESS, and every second was GORGEOUSNESS.

And, guess what...I’m going to make a proper film of the show with the help of my my friend Dan, and a bit of Arts Council cash. I’m taking Bobby Cool and The Band up to Leeds at the end of April to dick around in front of a camera for a few days. I’m so excited to see what is possible for this strange little show, and quite nervous that it will be forever fixed. 

Many artists produce an actual finished product, but my ‘product’ constantly shifts, as I AM the product. To fix something seems to go against what I stand for. The immediacy with an audience, the freedom to change something in the moment...that disappears when you publish a book or make a film. I have been forced to learn new ways both of making art and merely existing over the past year. The Winter was hard, that would normally be the time when I book to see lots of theatre shows. The shows I had tickets for got postponed, but anticipation is exquisite.

I’ve had a joyous time developing and running online puppetry workshops for people with learning and physical disabilities, and the company I’m working for upgraded my computer. No more making do with a seven year old iPad. I’m pretty chuffed about that, I’m not used to having nice new toys.

Another tremendous thing that happened this month took the form of a two weekend retreat for Winchester based writers. There were ten of us, I was very grateful to be part of it. And off the back of that I got offered a commission to write a play for the the youth theatre. I’ve never been hired as a writer before - a director, yes - but A WRITER...I guess they must’ve liked my silly limericks...

And I wrote and delivered two funerals this month. It is the strangest thing to ‘perform’ something you have written, to an ‘audience’ who are all wearing masks, who are utterly heartbroken, who don’t want to be there at all...to have them shake my hand, to ask for the transcript, to write me emails of thanks afterwards. Humbling and wonderful. I know I have found my true vocation in celebrating life.

Here are the RIDICULOUS limericks I wrote for the Writer’s Retreat. We were asked to give ‘found’ words and phrases from Winchester, and then given 40 minutes to write something using the words the group had provided, and imagine a place and a character speaking them. I imagined a homeless woman outside the toilets by the cathedral speaking these words, not caring who is listening, and having a lovely time....


There once was a badger named Brian
Who walked around sobbing and crying 
He stopped at the clump
A bunny said ‘Jump’
And now his new hobby is flying

There once was a young man called Albert
Who owned three thousand tight t-shirts
But numbers don’t count
When cyclists dismount
And you think ‘well one more can’t hurt’ 

There once was a woman named Clare
Who thought that her name was most rare
To Piecamba she went
All her money got spent
And now she’s obese, which is fair

There once was a young boy named Matt
Who got followed one day by a black rat
He got rather cross
Thought ‘I’ll show him who’s boss’
And gave him polite notice to splat.


Love and primroses,
JJlF xx

PS: If you are reading this on Patreon then THANK YOU! Stick around, lots more video content to be uploaded, that I won’t be sharing anywhere else.

I have an old bureau that I use as a desk. It’s been in my family for decades and has followed me through several house moves. I don’t treat it very well; I cellotape things to it, never use a coaster, the little drawers are full of random trinkets. It’s become the place where I spend most of my time these days, and I’ve really started to love and appreciate just how cool the old thing is. 


I sent off the revised book manuscript for ‘Frontal Lobotomy’ this week, and I changed a lot this time around. I discovered that when ‘art’ changes medium, from live performance to the written word, much needs to adapt. And that was quite a reckoning for me. I realised I had taken a lot for granted as performer; many words and phrases I was able to gloss over before now stood out in glaring disobedience. The way something is written down matters, because it’s fixed in place, and not gone the moment it’s spoken out loud. Every punctuation mark was agonised over - like I said, I’ve spent a lot of time at my desk this Winter.


And from tomorrow I’m tearing myself away from this cosy nook, and getting down to some rehearsing. For the next two weeks I’ll need to concentrate on ‘Frontal Lobotomy’ as I have an online gig, and want to film and edit some sections for the Patreon account I started just after Christmas. Working on that show feels so easy and comfortable to me now, though I still don’t like filming myself all that much. Online poetry gigs don’t feel as awkward as they used to - I guess all new things are uncomfortable at first.


When I performed an extract of ‘Testy Manifesto’ for the first time back in November 2019, the host of Cabaret Playroom and I spoke about my very first burlesque act, we have known each other for years, and that’s how she remembered me. It was a Mary Poppins act (I called it ‘Lolly Poppins’) and when I told her that my latest work was based around domestic abuse she said; “Well, we’re a long way from Cherry Tree Lane now.” Indeed we are. Weirdly enough, another friend who was in the audience that night brought up Mary Poppins too: “Is there a way to reference Poppins in this new work?” I think there is - I used a Suffragettes ‘Votes For Women’ sash in the Poppins act, it has hung as decoration in my living room for the past two years, and it’s going to feature in the new show. Why not? The Suffragettes were radical activists, and that fits with my message. They weren’t perfect, some of their policies were racist, and thankfully feminism has progressed since then. I think I will bring back the hatstand too, at least I’ll have somewhere to hang my coat rather than chucking it on the floor.


This month I also completed a mammoth arts council project grant application. The one I submitted in October was declined, but looking back I wasn’t ready then. Now the project has ballooned, and I’ve partnered with several domestic abuse charities / agencies. It’s been great to talk about my work with people who share my values, and great to think about this show having some sort of practical benefit for staff and survivors, just really great. I’ve come away from those phone conversations beaming from head to toe, and with copious amounts of renewed mojo. I hope it’s successful, high functioning domestic abuse survivors need support too, y’know. And I am so ready now. 


I’m still writing new poems, sometimes they just want to come out, and I let them, no point fighting. I’ve started compiling a separate anthology of Orphan Poems. I wish now I’d made a record of the ones I wrote for FL which I later cut from the show, I’ve learned to value all of my work now, not just what I think is good enough. All of it has some use, somewhere. 


Looking forward to Springtime,
JJlF xx




There’s a bolt on my door now
I lock it behind me
There’s a line of salt where carpet meets metal
Just to make sure
A tourmaline top
Electromagnetic
There’s a lock on my door now

There’s a crack in my heart now
You sanded it smooth
Where the younger, paler wood met yew
The rain started
The shape swelled
Hot air applied
Theres’ a gap in my heart now

There’s the smell of lavender now
It lingers like judgement
I think of tea ceremonies, words as weapons
Things you’ll never know
Bunches in the window
Sorceress perfume
There’s the scent of lavender now

My strings are much tighter now
I could snap at any moment
I’ve sat in our places, gazed at what we saw
When we were just wasting time
The weather turned
Fungi appeared
My strings are still stinging me

There’s a burn in my stomach now
Something I’m still purging
I’m thinking in cycles, in spirals, trines, oppositions, conjunctions, transits
I’m looking at Mars, full frontal
I’m seeing decay
I’m rotting from the inside out
Hipbones jutting
There’s a hole in my stomach now, dear Liza, dear Liza

There’s a twinge somewhere I just can’t place
There’s a debt to be paid 
To whom or where or why or how, I don’t know
I’m suspended in secrets
Tied up in a bow
I’m turning to face it
For when Pluto squares Pluto, there’ll be hell to pay
And I’ll be covered in debris

There’s a pattern here, distant yet familiar to me
Something I’m still learning
I’m thinking in new age newsletters, transcriptions, proofing, so much writing
Excavating, discovering an ancient city covered in volcanic dust
Deep rooting, learning about survival
So much staring, drifting, recording, reaching, wondering, wandering
Calming nervous system, needing something to do with my hands
Swimming up and down
Dreaming of otters
Dreaming of you often

How easy is it for feelings to turn
From Summer to Autumn
Both delicious seasons in their own right
The potential of fruitfulness and full flowering
The last gift nature gives
The foraging potential
Trying to gracefully accept what is left over
When the supplies have run out

Somewhere somehow, the moon covered the sun
Too many birds were in one tree
Something bad happens and a lot of people go bad themselves
That’s how awful it is
The news isn’t always bad
Life isn’t shit
When you really look at it
Take another swig and just say fuck it
At least you’ll get a poem or two out of it
​
I think I’ve paid that debt now
You wanted me to be less guarded
You’d never believe the depths that I sunk to
And what I discarded and what I kept
The dizzying heights that I climbed to
Learning self-restraint
And all from this desk
That I’m sitting at
Right now

Do you ever catch yourself doing something, and you think ‘I know I must be happy, because I’m doing that thing I always do when I’m happy.’ For me it’s singing. I found myself singing at the top of my lungs to an album that 90’s Vicky was obsessed with, while driving to Mama Jeu’s yesterday. Three weeks ago 2020 threw one last steaming turd at me, and I lost my shit and rather a drastic amount of weight. But if there’s one thing I’m rather adept at, it’s rising from the ashes.

I finished writing a book this week, and have sent it to the publishers for the proof copy. I won’t believe it until it’s a real thing in my hands. It’s the text of ‘Frontal Lobotomy’ and a selection of edited blogs that trace the process, plus a few other bits and pieces and photos from the live performances. I have included all of the brain haiku’s, and a poem that I later cut from the live performance. So I’d already done the writing, I just needed to learn the formatting. I hope it will be the first of many.

It’s been a booky month, as I found out that I’ve been featured in a new one coming out in April. In June 2019, my poet friend Dave Hubble came to see me perform ‘Frontal Lobotomy’ and we had a brief discussion afterwards about spoken word and burlesque for a chapter he was writing. The book is called ‘Spoken Word in the UK’ and is published by Routledge, which makes me feel very scholarly, as most of my theatre textbooks at University were published by them. 

I have been allocated some funding to re-work ‘Frontal Lobotomy’ for a digital platform and will be streaming some performances from my living room in the new year. It’s been interesting to experiment with performing to a camera, and I was able to invest in a plug-in microphone. I’m so grateful that the show is still finding new audiences, I had thought it was all over when the pandemic began this year.

Work on ‘Testy Manifesto’ is ongoing, and I found a way to frame the problematic middle section of the show. I’ve even booked a venue for a performance in June, because SURELY Covid will be long gone by then????!!! It’s currently running at 45 minutes, so I’ll do two performances to allow for social distancing. I’ve brought a burlesque element in, I wasn’t going to, but it felt right for a particular section, and Jeu Jeu insisted. She is often right about these things.

I wrote a very dark poem last month, and have shared it at a few online poetry events. I took quite a lot of artistic license with the imagery, really played up the wretchedness - we all need a lockdown poem, right?

​I keep surprising myself this year. 

Stay safe and cosy,
JJlF xx

In the house of self-undoing
A gradual drip fills a bucket overnight, and with a heavy slosh empties each day
Brown sludge clings to corners
Caterwauling creatures hunt for threads
And vacant spider-webs are hammocks for dust

In the house of self-undoing
A paint blob on the wall turns into a spindly bug, it’s legs rattle
Shower steam turns to green mould
Each day the doom-scrolling diary of a madwoman
Watches as the line on the graph climbs higher

In the house of self-undoing
A door frame shakes the frozen breath, a neighbours smoke unfurls
They are locked into screens
But taking no prisoners
Constipated hours pass, and no one thinks to help 

Bags are half packed in the house of self-undoing
An endless drone makes sparks fly, there is blood in the toilet
The sweat is fresh
But I can tell it disgusts you
Deft spiders descend with alarming speed

The house of self-undoing has paper thin walls
Terrifying hallucinations that only arouse her curiosity
Her voice rasps
Her hand won’t write
She thinks of the last meal she had with her mother in Peru, the llama skin tablecloth, the clay pots, the gentle candlelight on sloped ceilings.
Loves washes through in convulsions
Just let me leave
No sound escapes
And passers by admire the flowers outside