In December Ugly Collective performed a snippet of our new show Lulu: A Circus Sex Tragedy (dir. Chloé Doherty) at The Yard theatre. Now we've hit 2016, our knife play is well underway! We are currently applying for funding in order to get the show on its feet in both the worlds of performance art and circus!
"Balls-out craziness..." London City Nights (2015)
This week we submitted to Paris and Stockholm Fringe, and the applications just keep coming...
More about the show: "It is part circus, part dance and part performance art. Our piece is inspired by Wedekind's Vaudevillian circus tale, Lulu. It follows a female circus artist who marries 7 men, each of them die, and it results in her being stabbed to death by Jack the Ripper. This led us to knife work; we've been working with a knife tango and dancing on knife point, and are currently collaborating with a few knife jugglers. The original text is clearly misogynistic (our piece is void of speech unless in song which is English), but we believe that their is ample opportunity to both challenge and reimagine it within a modern context. It's a heady mix of exhibitionism and anti-spectacle, discussing the anti-climatic nature of 'actors' performing. It's overtly performative and self referential, with the performers acknowledging that they’re performing. The elements of danger within the text are very prominent, due to the way in which the femme fatale meets her end. We're experimenting with what could go from within a circus environment, exploring the nature of a theatrical event, demonstrating the risk of performing with the possibility of failure and the moment before it all goes wrong. We are currently playing with the idea of glamourising the domesticated, and how we might transition from turning the chopping of an onion into a spectacle - then to knife act. We're also in the process of making a padded voluptuous type costume for the finale which oozes glitter and red pearls, turning the anti-spectacle into spectacle and vice versa.
Keep checking back for details on where we take it from here!