An old friend I met the other night told me that when him and his ex-girlfriend broke up, she wrote him a long letter afterwards (on an actual typewriter) explaining how she felt. In response, he wrote a series of poems, self-published the anthology on amazon, and bought two copies, one for his shelf, and the other he sent to her - with the handwritten inscription “This is how I feel.” I was deeply impressed. We spoke about how poetry was so pure, in that finding the right word, the right series of words, considering their musicality and playing with metaphor was very satisfying and could help pull you out of a dark place.

On New Years Day I wrote my first new poem for probably six months. I wanted to try writing an Ode, as I hadn’t attempted one yet, though thinking about it, the whole of ‘Frontal Lobotomy’ is an ode to Tom Waits. I climbed up a big hill that day, and decided when I got home to write an ode to the hill. I made the mistake of titling the poem before starting it, and that kind of dictated where it went. It didn’t turn out very Ode-y. It got heard for the first time at Poetry Platform this week, and I followed it up with Pablo Neruda’s ‘Ode to Wine’ so the audience could hear a proper ode from a proper poet.

This morning, Lisa from Cabaret Playroom and I had a phone conversation where she gave the audience comments and her own feedback from my first extract performance of ‘Testy Manifesto.’ This is what the audience wrote - it’s all here, I’ve left nothing out!

Write one line to the artist about their work

Really enjoyed it. Your act is brilliant
Brilliant concept, lovely monologue
Very disciplined work. Well done
Magnifique!
Some lovely writing and moments of performance
Enchanting, commanding and a bit Shakespeary
Very well done
Beautiful, honest and powerful
Mesmerising to watch and listen to
Very powerful and a beautiful rawness


Write a publicity quote for the act

Wonderful leftfield fun with arresting moments of pathos

French fun!
We all have skeletons in our closet. Barbie is one of them!
Enchantress shares thought babble
Poetry of beautiful clarity and honesty


What was your favourite/ memorable moment
The barbie

Barbie and the surreal text to link sections
Barbie
Barbie
Her honey voice and nice tits
The poetry - and the skeleton part was great too - scary
Barbie
The Barbie jokes were funny
Barbie made me laugh with her ‘edifying’ comments


One thing to consider for future development
Smooth out the technical difficulties. Ten Ten Ten across the board!

More humour
Director. Performance needs shaping/editing
Shakespeare went over my head and so did she
Not sure about the French intro & outro
Keep going with it and keep in this direction
Why take off eye patch and beret so soon?
More movement to go with the storytelling
Just brilliant! Your poetry is really powerful - at times you could have let it breathe a little more (slower pace).
From the notes I made, Lisa’s lovely, helpful feedback, and through interpreting these comments, I’ve made a list of things to edit/change, develop and interrogate. I’m much harsher when giving myself feedback, but believe me when I say I have taken onboard all of the positive things too.

• Trust a techie. Get someone else to operate the sound. Doing my own tech worked out ok for ‘Frontal Lobotomy.’ Not this time.
• Slow down. The words are good, let them land.
• They loved the Barbie bit, they needed to laugh at that point, so the structure is working. Where else can I include more humour? Leave space for laughter.
• In the conversation I have with the skeleton at the start the language becomes more heightened. Can I work on more stylised movement for this section? Lisa said that I looked like I was a good mover - remember that I am, and I trained in physical theatre FFS. I can be bolder here. The opening image with the skeleton was striking, I think the audience were expecting more of this.
• The language is dense, flowery, like Shakespeare - but my likeable stage presence makes it natural and accessible. I remember one review of Frontal Lobotomy’ called it ‘Fantastical, yet accessible.’ Is this my trope? Could be.
• The French character needs developing, we need more of her. I’m going to get some French language CD’s from the library to play in my car - but only for the easy journeys. Writing in another language that I barely speak, and in a way that a mainly native English speakers will understand is a big challenge for me. And then delivering that correctly and confidently...fuck. Ok then, better get better.
• The subject matter is compelling, and there’s enough potential material to easily fill an hour. Aim for this.
• It worked well using a mic for the Barbie section. It was a nice contrast to the fragility of everything else. But although I could be heard fine during the rest of the piece, I need to be more aware of projection when music is playing underneath the speech.
• The music is lovely, using French music helps to maintain the convention that is introduced at the start.
• Work with a director / outside eye. This is the next step, and I really must get more comfortable with asking for help.
• Keep the simplicity and rawness, and find contrasts within this. It’s elegant, but at points can be theatricalised.

I’m aiming for a half hour version of this for Moving Voices in Southampton on February 28th, where I’m the guest poet. That’s double time wise what I managed for Cabaret Playroom. Time to stop dicking around. I’ve hidden, shrunk and drifted for too long now, and I need more Jeu Jeu back in my life.
With much love,

JJLF xx


The Ode to Recovery
It’s steep

And speeding up on the approach to a blind bend
Braking in a breath
Only a moment
The next kerb in view
Snatches the wheels and flips the car
Then the straight road reappears.
It’s long

And a walking fire hazard ignites a tree, she also can’t see
That putting out the fire
By rolling in the dirt
For the next pair of eyes just flint
Until at last the countenance clears
It’s narrow

And the question is answered with a gunshot and screech
I’m checking for holes
They say it takes a village
And the next time you sing
Will be the only song you’ll need
It’s bleak, today
But my heart is pounding for the right reasons
Taking in a breath
Look up for a moment
The next track starts to play
Sure, a good deal of it is classic PTSD
But maybe your bad points are just your personality


I know this ode to the road to recovery wasn’t really an ode
Neither is the road
But the signs get easier to read I’m told


They say climbing a hill diagonally
Makes it easier to do
This somehow seems absurd to me
I make it difficult
I save my breathlessness for the view
Am I still here if I’m not speaking

They say don’t go around, go through
Still my heart is pounding for the right reasons
I’m gasping
But all along I knew


PS: Photo Credit James Millar. Thank you!

All feedback is helpful. Even the more negative feedback, depending on how vulnerable I’m feeling, has a use somewhere. I often feel that the things people say to me after a performance, reveal a lot about them and their own experiences. When I was performing burlesque regularly, sometimes a well-meaning woman would approach me after the show, either when I was leaving or at the bar, and tell me how much she enjoyed my act, and that she was glad that I wasn’t skinny. This proves, at least to me, that anyone else will view my work through their own lens, and that it’s up to me to take on whatever is helpful, which it all is, in a way. 

I’ve had a lot of very useful feedback on the first extract of my new show over the past six weeks, and it’s time to record some of it here to try and make sense of it.​

At the start of November I presented the very clunky beginnings of ‘Jeu Jeu la Foille’s Testy Manifesto’ (still not sure if I’m keeping that title) at Lost and Found at the Railway in Winchester, It’s a unique gig; all the artists and audience sit in a circle, and everyone shares a couple of songs, poems, and whatnot, then the audience can ask whoever has just performed a couple of questions, and a bit of chat happens, then the next performance. It’s informal, lovely and inclusive, a good place to try something I wasn’t at all comfortable with.

My bit was fairly intense, I remembered that I’m not good at answering questions, or even speaking properly when I’ve just performed. Nerves and cider got the better of me, I forgot nearly all of the lines I’d tried to memorise for the past two weeks, and I hadn’t rehearsed at all with the skeleton puppet I’d decided to add at the last minute. So I faffed about a bit with the props and read my words from a folder. People said they enjoyed my writing, they showed me images on their phones that it reminded them of, they told me to think big, they asked me if what I was doing was ‘performance art.’

A couple of days before Lost and Found, I had done an extract performance of Frontal Lobotomy for Write a Note in Southampton. Normally I have debilitating fear before performing, and am impossible to speak to directly afterwards. I honestly really enjoyed this gig, it was like putting on a comfortable pair of old shoes. I know I know Frontal Lobotomy, and I know it works. At least by making something new, I can now direct my abject fear onto that, and I’m doing my best to continue performing the old show, though it seems like every prop and item of costume has worn out and needs replacing.

I also made a very unimportant announcement that after April 1st 2020, which is my 10th birthday as Jeu Jeu la Foille (the anniversary of my first burlesque performance), that I’m not going to perform any of my old acts anymore. There are three left that I perform on request, the seven or so more I made were retired a while back, some only made it to the stage a few times, two not at all. This doesn’t mean that I won’t still perform as Jeu Jeu, but it will only be what I made after April 2016. I’m letting all the old burlesque acts go, though I may end up doing one final send off.

The real challenge for me over the month of November was getting something performance ready for Cabaret Playroom. I had a drastic reshuffle of what I was going to perform after feeling the difficulty of Lost and Found. I rearranged some of the poems, cut the poem that was most explicitly about domestic abuse, put a ‘softer’ poem at the end, added two new bits of music, and reintroduced a French narrator character to bookend the whole thing a bit more theatrically. Once I was as happy as I could be with the structure, I approached three friends and asked them if they wouldn’t mind me sending them the extract to read, and letting me know their thoughts.

I received such varied and generous responses, and I’ve paraphrased some below. All three readers had seen the full Frontal Lobotomy this year, so they knew the kind of thing they were in for.

• Writing wise, very strong, its going to need to be performed dynamically. Reminded of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Fleabag, A Midsummer Nights Dream.
• How does the Barbie bit fit in with the rest? It feels like three different shows, or three distinct stages to a show.
• The French narrator character? Is she an unreliable narrator? 

Even to respond to their feedback and answer their questions was really helpful in cementing exactly why I was saying and doing this script. I also realised that I was asking a lot of the audience, and was going to have to trust myself. As well as all the specific notes, I received a lot of encouragement and practical help from this point on. It had been me and four walls for a long time, and so I was brave and asked for help. I covered my skeleton puppet in brown paper, and a very practical person performed emergency triage on him. Together we discovered how to edit music cues on GoButton. I spent a week frowning and talking to myself. I painted some old ballet pumps silver and bought a dress that I’d be unlikely to wear in real life...and was less than £20.

Cabaret Playroom is a long-standing event and testing ground for new cabaret work. There were five other artists/groups performing new work last week. The audience filled out feedback sheets, we will receive a video of our performance, and a skype meeting to discuss the feedback given. There was one other performer on the line up who was concerned that his piece was more on the performance art side of cabaret, and was worried that he’d stick out. I reassured him by assuring him that he wouldn’t be the only weirdo, and adding that my piece was ‘depressing as fuck.’

I had three friends in the audience who spoke to me once the whole show was over. So what follows and rounds off this blog, is some of the paraphrased feedback from them that I’ve retained, and the conclusions I drew from it, intermingled together. It’s keeping me going, and its made me want to carry on with making this thing.

• Get someone else to operate your sound, particularly the first cue when you’re wearing an eye-patch. What about your lighting? Use of a shadow. Think bigger.
• Vocal delivery too fast at times, let it breathe.
• The Barbie bit was funny. The house poem was evocative.
• Raw and personal, but held. Feels like a privilege to be allowed to see, non-apologetic, not holding out for laughs, but getting them anyway, on your terms.
• You’re showing a side of the issue that we don’t normally hear of, we were totally in the unknown, we couldn’t have known. 
• ‘You’re a long way from Cherry Tree Lane now.’

That final line belongs in a poem. 

JJ xx

PS: Title image by Franz Fiedler, 1920’s

When I read over old diaries I can usually remember exactly where I was and what I was feeling at the time, no matter what I was writing about. I have a whole shelf of old diaries, and many more have been lost over the years. The most precious is a lockable Minnie Mouse diary that I kept when I was 8 to about 10 years old. Occasionally when I am drunk (brave) enough, a good friend will be treated to a spoken-word rendition of 9 year old me, and we fall about laughing at how much of a twat I sound. When I read over the past blogs I often cringe...that was me, on that day...I’d write it differently now, I think. One of my biggest fears is that someone one day will find and read the dairies I’ve kept over the years, and discover how boring I can be.

The podcast I spoke on in June (the one about Tom Waits) was released in August. I must’ve listened to the first of the three episodes about 20 times, hardly daring to believe that actual words were coming out of my mouth that I could actually hear. The second episode I probably had on three times, by the third time I think I had to stop it halfway through, as my Inner Shitty Committee was getting involved, telling me I was banging on about death too much. By the third episode I gave it a once over, decided that the entire time I was talking it was largely incomprehensible, and then got on with my life. I’m still glad I did it though. It was gloriously me.

In September my clothes came off on two occasions, for the final Barelesque and Naked Girls Reading. Both were tremendous in very different ways, for what those events and the people involved stand for, and what it meant to me to be able to take part. 

I had a very comforting and useful conversation with a good friend a few days ago. I told her about the new show I was working on, that I had a whole load of poem words, but couldn’t think of any images to go with them, that I didn’t know how to guide the audience through a performance about domestic abuse, that I wanted the audience to ‘like’ it, whatever ‘it’ ended up being, because it might not be a performance, it might be a book, or a short film....She said that by ‘liking it’ I really meant ‘liking me.’ She said that it wasn’t up to me to curate or host the audience through their experience of me, but to turn up and be me, at least to begin with. There was a whole lot more to it that I’m still mulling over.

And I realised that I’d put in some good thinking and writing work into this new thing I’m working on, working title is ‘Jeu Jeu la Foille’s Testy Manifesto’, but I hadn’t done much of the actual physical work of learning lines and practising saying the words. I did an open mic performance at Poetry Platform last week, I felt hugely underprepared, and the room was full. I did the Barbie speech and two new poems. The feedback I pressed for afterwards was that I can let it breathe more, it felt too much like one big blurb. It was a shock to the system to be reading new words for an audience, my face felt like it was burning the minute I sat back down. 

I agreed with the letting it breathe advice, and have decided to cut one of the poems from the Scratch performance I’ll be sharing for the first time at Cabaret Playroom next month. I’ll include the discarded for now poem at the end here. I’d been exploring feminine archetypes in my writing, and I wanted to write something from The Huntress, and I’d stumbled across a feminist re-telling of the stories about Jezebel from the Bible. I don’t mind the poem on the page, but I find it a bit icky to say out loud; the name Jezebel is very loaded for me. 

And so I’ve made the decision to turn up as me, to this performance at the end of November. A polished and prepared version of me, who has learned her words and practised saying them out loud. Maybe she has been brave enough to ask someone else to read or hear her practising her words. She’ll listen intently to what they have to say, because she has very little else to go on at this time. And so what will happen is that Vicky will do all of the work, some of it while crying, and that Jeu Jeu will miraculously appear at the last minute, and take over. 

I’m bringing all new poem words to Cabaret Playroom on November 28th at The Albany in Deptford, London. There are several other artists and groups performing all new work too, and its hosted by Tricity Vogue. It’s now six poems that I’ve settled on showing, and an odd lecture on Barbie. I think it is the best of the writing I’ve done, I’m oddly quite proud of it...even though it is angry and bitter in places, but I’ve written a kind of disclaimer into the first poem, I tell the 
audience that ‘I haven’t chosen the easiest things to say, there isn’t an amicable way, but I promise you I’ll be ok. And so will you, no harm in peeking.’ 

And so I’m thinking of this performance like it’s the first window in a house I’m gradually building, and is forming all around me, but I can’t quite see it completed yet. 

With much love,
JJ xx​

Her laugh comes from a deep place
The belly heaves and sighs
Her cries outweigh her fluid intake
The eyes leak and run
She moves with hesitance and purpose
The feet are hard and wrung
Strong calves resting on weak ankles
Crooked teeth held by strong gums
Poisoned lungs surrounding a too big heart
She has an irrefutable aim
She animates the inanimate
But the circle is never quite complete
She appears in a puff of smoke
Skating on thin ice
Complete with a plume of feathers
Eyelids and nipples at the ready
She takes aim and bashes back
A canon fire of accusation
A roundabout of crown prosecution
A slide of reticent depression
A hand that guided sharp compressions
A brief brush with religious obsession
A long tussle with a previously learned lesson
She reclines precariously in a sliding window
Defensively weaponised
And they call her Jezebel

I’m nearly at the end of the notebook I started back in January and inscribed with ‘Early writings for Jeu Jeu la Foille’s New Thing.’ Later on this year I added underneath ‘A show about defeating a monster.’ I’m not sure if it’s about that anymore, I don’t know what the new thing is about. The notebook began sensibly enough - with lists - but it’s recently devolved into my usual ranting space. The pages in between have all the poems. I’ve written three more pieces since the last blog, and three short monologues - in French. It turns out that a book I’ve needed to read for some time finally found me (see title), and this inspired me to write something in French, and to explore the idea of protest. I have set myself a very difficult task if I want to perform this successfully. I gave my new character, with the beginnings of a costume, an introduction at Poetry Platform this month. It was a bit of a disaster, but I promised to get better. A friend in the audience told me that I spoke French with an Italian accent....
Full ‘Frontal Lobotomy’ came back to life on June 1st, and though I was nervous as hell for the first ten minutes, and it was hot and sweaty, I got through it and I couldn’t be happier. The audience were mostly the friends of FAP in the Attic, and many had performed already that day. I have a lot of respect for these people, and I didn’t want to let them down. I also had my youngest ever audience member that day; an eight year old girl, who attends FAP regularly with her Dad. I have an age guidance of 16+ for ‘adult themes’ as although it’s harmless enough (I think) it’s not really a show for the kiddies. The girl held up the brain model during the lobotomy demonstration, she was thrilled, as was I.

The full show runs at 50 minutes, I’m happiest with this trimmed version, it’s tighter and less fussy than me trying to stretch to an hour. As I was rehearsing for this performance, I found myself comparing the writing in Frontal Lobotomy to what I’m working on now. My new stuff feels more confident and less clunky somehow, but I am still very fond of rhyming. I’ve popped my head up at a few poetry open mics recently, and it feels very different to be holding my words in a folder, wearing ‘normal’ clothes. No one is getting covered in lipstick at these events, and in an odd way it seems this is what I’m known for now; a trail of (consenting) victims, myself included.

I have incorporated a prop into one of my pieces of writing. Last November I was lucky enough to meet the writer Tom Sharp at a Halloween party. During one of his spooky poems we passed around a smooth wood carving of a raven. I was taken by this idea of something tactile for the audience to experience alongside the words, and liked the low-level, non-threatening participation. It was probably in January, during a discussion on how the media portrays women in one of my Freedom Program sessions that a woman from the group said “Barbie is such a slut!” Me being me, I piped up with something along the lines of “Well I saw a documentary on Barbie not long ago. When she was originally made it was because before then little girls only had pretend babies and kitchens to play with. Barbie was the first adult doll made, she had loads of jobs, Barbie is aspirational!” I wasn’t all that interested in playing with dolls as a kid, and I think I’ve always been slightly suspicious of the idea of Barbie into adulthood. But here I was defending her. And so I did some research into Barbie, with the question in my head; Who taught us to be threatened by Barbie? I found out about her jobs, pets, education, relationships, height and weight, and I tell the audience these things while they pass around my naked Barbie-doll prop. I keep adding to this section, and I like to say it through a microphone if available - I don’t usually use a mic in any performances, but it feels right for this part. The last time I performed this monologue, a woman in the audience plaited Barbie’s hair for her.

I have a performance at The Art House in Southampton, as part of Moving Voices at the end of this month, where I’ll be doing a half hour version of Frontal Lobotomy. And on July 10th me, Bobby Cool and the band are off to London, to perform as part of Clout! for Studio 3 Arts in Barking. Then I’ll be reading naked with wonderful women on July 25th at Fontaines, again in London. The theme for this Naked Girls Reading is ‘Trash Fiction’, and I’ve chosen two extracts (not my writing!) that are very funny and very filthy. As ever, I’m proud to be part of the naked club. My body, my choice, and all that.



I’ll say goodbye to you for now with a new poem. Is it sad? I find it sad.
JJ xx



Where will I go?



The front door is painted white

We live at number one
A crunchy pathway running alongside
Overshadowed by a pylon


The hallway is so narrow
We can’t fit more than two
Shrilling phone on the wall, treacherous stairs
It echoes everywhere you go


There is a table laid for four
We always have some mess
The gap dividing houses closes over the years
Replaced with a slab of wood, crumbling step


The vocal chords of the house are there
And we have little privacy
Those three walls have stories to tell
The shabby windows say it publicly


The garden goes on for miles and miles
Stopped by a tin shed
The bones of passed on pets slowly sink
And rotten cooking apples play dead


There is a constant dripping tap
The floorboards don’t dare creak
The open fire leaves dust in every splinter
The roof is just starting a 20 year leak


The front bedroom tempts me with perfume and high heels
The middle room is warm and dark
Our bedroom is only accessible by passing
Through a portal into Narnia


It’s the place we can escape to
When the shouting gets too loud
A multiverse can be created with bunk beds and wardrobes
Just wish the toilet wasn’t all the way down


I can fit inside that drawer
I’ll roll you up in a quilt
Let’s pretend to be radio dj’s
You’ve ruined another perfectly good story
Steps on stairs indicate guilt is coming this way
Let’s pretend we didn’t hear


Passing the baton of blame
The vocal chords gone slack
The house heaves a sigh of relief
The dust settles, the sticky soup of secrecy sucks back

I want to this blog to be about my creative process again. I feel like it’s become too focused on my inner world and outer issues, and not really connected to my output...which has been sorely lacking. Although my fifteen-minute version of ‘Frontal Lobotomy’ was a hit for a small but appreciative audience on a snowy afternoon earlier this month! And it’s being unleashed again at Chaplins Cellar Bar in Boscombe this Tuesday. So no one is safe. And I’m thrilled to be performing the full show again on June 1st at my spiritual of the The Railway in Winchester. A quick annoying plug there.! When I’ve read back my morning pages from last year I’ve sometimes been annoyed by my own voice. And I try to reassure myself that it’s ok; I’m clearing the debris, floundering in the fog...It’s ok to be rusty. I find that writing on this public platform helps me chip away at what has been nagging at me, but in a crafted and proof-read way. And that in itself is a creative process.

For me there is nothing better for blowing off the cobwebs than taking part in a three day theatre workshop, and I’m grateful to ‘past me’ for having the wherewithal to book up for Peta Lily’s ‘Alchemy of Archetypes’ - which happened last week. Peta’s opening question for our group of twelve was that if we had a magic wand or ‘stick of curiosity’, what would we want to have appear or be led towards by the end of our three days together? We answered individually, and I was so touched by the responses. Mine was that I NEEDED TO KNOW what I was going to write about in the new show I WAS DESPERATELY TRYING TO WRITE. I didn’t shout, but I think my frustration was clear, as a few of the participants (we soon became good friends) approached me to ask about the show I WAS TRYING TO WRITE. Why have I not learned by now that I don’t NEED TO KNOW anything? I knew I was doing the workshop for fun and laughter and connection, and I got plenty! We explored nine mythical archetypes using movement, masks and voice, they were; Mother, Child, Trickster, Fool, Devil/Lucifer, Lover/Romantic, Death, Crone and Hero. Each archetype has a centre or physical focus, and a mantra that they can repeat internally and externally to create an overall ‘feeling.’ What struck me about how the workshop was structured was how well Peta built in opportunities for us to check in with ourselves and each other throughout the process, allowing us to give each other bits of feedback and encouragement. This was important as the work was experimental and often felt quite otherworldly and heightened. I felt challenged, but never unsafe. The importance of feeling over knowing was with me throughout. And since then, the dreams I knew I was having but couldn’t remember, are hanging around for a bit longer in the morning. 

There was a particular archetype I had in the back of my mind, and it wasn’t on the list above. I wondered if there would be something in one or several of the masks that would help me encapsulate it neatly, write from it freely; all the while keeping the veneer of my carefully constructed Jeu Jeu la Foille character, so audiences would never know how ‘true’ my writing actually is. A good friend who has seen ‘Frontal Lobotomy’ several times asked me recently how much of me was in that show. It was a difficult question to answer, because it’s all me and also nothing to do with me. I remembered last week that I’d unknowingly worked with archetypes for that show; they were reoccurring characters from Tom Waits songs, and the all the costumes I switch between during the hour represent them, visually at least. Those costume changes became the arc; my background in burlesque saw to that, where in a sense the costume IS the narrative. Anyone who has ever rehearsed a strip-tease act knows that it’s ten per cent artfully getting undressed, and ninety per cent grumpily, fussily and fumbily getting dressed again and again. What the costume is, and how and in which order it is removed, and most importantly WHY, is the whole point...otherwise keep it on and do something else. An afterthought on editing this is; Maybe the WHY is that you love your body and want others to see how much you love your body? I yo-yo’d between scrawny and somewhat ‘fleshier’ throughout the time I was regularly doing burlesque gigs. I panicked over not fitting into my costumes which I either couldn’t afford to replace, or didn’t have time to remake. But whatever shape I was in, whatever I thought of myself that day, the audience still got a performance. Shit went wrong all the time, and I always made it difficult for myself with thousands of props. Looking back I was incredibly sloppy, or nervous. But I mostly got away with it because I was often ‘the funny one’ in a line up of Glamazons!

The archetype of Lucifer has a mantra; it’s, ‘I am beautiful, and I can do whatever I want.’ I found playing this archetype very special, but I chose to play the Trickster mask in the final part of the workshop, I needed his energy back in my life! Lucifer’s mantra I can use to help with the sloppiness and nervousness. I’m not getting rid of the props.

In truth the archetype that has been nagging away at me, is far messier and grotesque than I would like. Everything thing I’ve written so far for this elusive new show seems to have a glaring trigger warning or health advice,  “CAUTION: MAY INDUCE CRYING IN READER.” So, I needed to know the path I was on with this, and whether it was worth my sanity to persevere. Plus, funding applications, ugh. They need a description. I wrote the ‘blurb’ for ‘Frontal Lobotomy’ before I’d finished writing the show, but a ‘blurb’ for what I’m working on I just cannot see. Ugh.

I am halfway through a course called The Freedom Programme. It’s based on a book by Pat Craven calling ‘Living with the Dominator.’ The course is for domestic abuse survivors, and the Dominator character is an abusive man. It’s very gendered, though recognises that domestic abuse is a broad and complex crime. All of the people on my course are women, whose perpetrators are men. The Domestic Abuse Bill is currently going through Parliament, and you can read the draft proposal that begins with the statutory definition online.
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The Dominator is the Archetype, but ‘he’ has several different ‘masks’ which characterise certain behaviours or tactics. These are; The Bully, The Badfather, The Headworker, The Jailer, The Sexual Controller, The King of the Castle, The Liar and The Persuader. The Dominator puts rules in place to control their ‘submissive.’ These rules constantly change, and so do the tactics to keep them in place. Not always, but often the Dominator resorts to physical violence when the constantly changing ‘rules’ aren’t obeyed. Even as I write this I’m making notes in the little book to my left on how each ‘mask’ might be physically represented or played....see....this blog....creative process...ha! As well as the Dominator masks, are the counter-masks; The Lover, The Partner, The Goodfather, The Truthteller, The Negotiator, The Confidence-Booster, The Liberator and The Friend. “Not a Saint that we are seeing, just a Decent Human Being.” So the Decent Human Being is also an Archetype...? I also started thinking about the female other to the Dominator, and arrived  - perhaps too quickly  - at Dominatrix, and was reminded of a conversation I overheard, where one person was saying to the other that she knew of a dominatrix who made her clients read feminist literature out loud in their sessions....and I thought back to ‘The Scum Manifesto’ and the latest series of ‘American Horror Story.’ Could this character be recalled like the Doctor is in ‘Frontal Lobotomy’? In any case this is whole rabbit hole of research (nice choice of words?) that is completely out of my comfort zone, but then again, so was brain surgery! 

A few weeks ago my mind was spinning, and not with juicy creative thoughts, but horrible paranoid, and often violent flashes of panic. With what took seemingly colossal effort, I wrote the following poem. It’s new and raw and came from a place of desperation. But I felt better as soon as I started writing it that night, and so I’ll leave you with it.

The rules of the game are
We play until you lose
You’ll do what I say
Come when I call
The rules at school don’t change
Mine do
I’ll tell you stories about demons and ghouls
Until you obey my rules
The rules are
They aren’t the rules
Until I say it’s cool
Fool
As a rule of thumb
You’ll lose if you ignore
The Rules
The the sake of your soul 
You better follow my rules
Don’t spread the news
About you breaking my rules
I refuse to excuse
My need of these rules
Your ignorance of the rules
Only fuels my desire to crush you
Cruel woman
Have you any idea
How much?
I love you

​Xxx

Photo credit: Gemma Betts 2012

I was a mostly silent clown for several years, and my reaction to that was to make a show that was nearly all words. Now it's all about the linguistic acrobatics. I 'proclaimed' during an audience feedback session on Monday night at the Cockpit Theatre, that there was nothing shocking, revolutionary or empowering about a woman taking her clothes off onstage. Was it better when I just got my boobs out and said nothing? That was a rhetorical question. I've read yet another feminist journalists response to the Emma Watson boob fiasco this morning, and I'm feeling snippy. There was a famous burlesque performer called Gypsy Rose Lee who recited poetry while stripping, and in doing so made potent commentary on the male gaze. Did/would anyone actually pay attention to the words? Or would we all be too distracted by the flesh, the artful disrobing and cheeky knowingness of this gorgeous woman to notice the power in her subversiveness? The uneventful striptease I do happens early on in 'Frontal Lobotomy', almost like I want to get it over with, and move onto something more useful. A friend who saw the show in Leeds recently (this is someone I trained at LISPA with, and who saw Jeu Jeu doing her 'Crossroads' act in Edinburgh 2015, so they know my work in context) said the semi-nude section was important because of how I don't 'make a big deal out of it' - "Yeah, we've all seen flesh before, we know about burlesque, let's move on from that, and do something more interesting with it." Certainly the nudity in Frontal Lobotomy is intended to be more about being exposed and vulnerable; 'stripping away the layers of reasoning to that which is unknowable'. It's definitely a post-burlesque show for me, I loved making and performing Jeu Jeu's funny skits, but in giving her a voice, I've made her a grown up. She'll be 6 years old on April 1st, and I'm celebrating her birthday this year for the first time, almost as if I've finally acknowledged her existence, and need to ritualise it somehow. More and more I find myself consulting her when I need to make creative decisions.

A comment from the Theatre in the Pound audience on Monday night, was that my stance on frontal lobotomies and mental illness was neutral and rooted in the 1950's. The question was raised that where was my opinion on all of it? This is bearing in mind that I'd only performed the first 15 minutes of the show, and I think an opinion does develop throughout the 55 minutes of the whole show - one that is not in any way in support of experimental brain surgery to 'cure' mental illness. Should I have an opinion? Or allow the audience to form their own? Another comment I had recently when I performed the whole piece at The Albany in London, was 'Why didn't you say "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy?" I was waiting for that line!' Yes, the whole show hinges on the zinger Tom Waits dropped on a 1970's chat show, and the truth is I did say it during the Edinburgh run. But it always felt too clunky, that I was subtitling, and not allowing space for the audience to work it out for themselves. I'm still figuring out who this woman is, and why she's here, saying all of this stuff. I got put on the spot the other night... strangers demanding answers, it was interesting!

So I'm coming to realise, with every performance and every conversation, that I'm crassly dividing audiences into two camps: those that want to know what it's about, and those that haven't a clue what it's about, and welcome that! However, I've sat through a lot of shows that I didn't understand, and knew that the company didn't want me to understand, and that just made me angry. If you've ever seen a Forced Entertainment show, then you'll know what I mean, and maybe you love them - I don't, but I've made myself go and see them several times. There's something infuriating about the black nosed clown, it's an arrogance that's very fun to play, but can lead the audience into all sorts of negative emotions. I know this from my work with The Mist: We Are Not Cakes - there's a fine line between a celebration of absurdism, and being deliberately, nihilistically annoying. I don't want to alienate an audience by making them feel that I'm withholding any form of explanation on purpose.

I had a very useful and balanced review written about the show from my performance in Leeds, where the reviewer from Theatre Bubble had expressed frustration at not being able to work it all out, but mused that maybe that was the point. She said that my characters were more sketched out than being fully formed, a convention commonly seen in cabaret performance, and that this provoked a more cerebral response in her. Read the review in full here.

A line from the opening speech from the show goes; 'We're going to take an inebriational stroll through the bowels of my grey matter, and rest somewhere between the pre-frontal cortex and limbic system, suspended between rationality and sensation.'

Are we thinking, or are we feeling? A transorbital lobotomy severs the connections between the 'human' and 'mammal' parts of the brain, (to massively oversimplify the most complex and mysterious organ in the body) and somewhere in that brain tissue is where I believe is our sense of self resides - the two halves that need to be integrated.

A quote I loved from the Theatre Bubble review was; 'I was swept along through dreams and images, as if in a dream, from which one wakes up bemused, but happily so.' I had three stuttery dreams last night; one was like an episode of 'Black Mirror', one was rude(!), and in another I was talking to foxes. I'm not innocent when I dream, and if I took them all literally and at face value I would be seriously worried about my state of mind. As my teacher at LISPA practically screamed at us when we frowned, rubbed our foreheads and whined 'I don't know' during the final neutral mask session on the IMPP course in Berlin "YOU DON'T HAVE TO KNOW!!" But we want to know don't we? We want to work it all out and then file it in the 'dealt with' drawer. I remember going to see a production of 'Cleansed' by Sarah Kane years ago, that left me so emotionally distraught immediately after, that I had to go and hide in a toilet cubicle until I'd calmed down. My boss at the time who I'd gone to the theatre with, said he felt jealous that I'd been so affected, when his response was cerebral and objective. I felt horribly embarrassed of my response at the time, and longed for more objectivity. Neither reaction to the show was the 'right' one to have, in hindsight both of us enjoyed it in our own way, but it was our self-judgement and comparison that could be seen as negative.

I think what I'm trying to say here is that I can't tell you anymore about what my show is about, anymore than I can interpret my dreams for you, read your mind or control your imagination. Someone said to me once that dreams are like your brain taking a shit. My brain has a shit every night, a beautiful shit. Your brain has beautiful shits every night too. And that's all this show I made is - my beautiful shit, made as visible and audible as I can make it, with as much care and craft as I can manage. I'm not ready to 'know' what it's about yet, and maybe I never will. But you are most welcome to tell me what it is about for you.