Theatremaker Rachael Young writes for Culture about her new show Nightclubbing, an explosive new performance fusing 'visceral live music and intergalactic visions to start a revolution', which receives its Irish premiere on April 25th as part of this year's Live Collision festival.
I made this work as a letter to the patriarchy - to those who construct false ideas about beauty and normative views of womanhood.
I made this work for people on the edges, those waiting for their opportunity to take centre stage. I made this work as an ode to togetherness and community, a space where no-one has to feel like they’re in this alone, or struggling to be seen.
I made this work because I felt that my art could shout louder than I can!
The show’s title, Nightclubbing, is a tribute to Grace Jones’ 1981 album with the same name. The album was influential; way ahead of its time and incredibly eclectic – it mixed reggae, electronica, funk, soul, tango and post-punk, and incorporated lots of remixes.
Listen: Grace Jones sings Nightclubbing
In 2015, a story hit the news about a group of women who were refused entry to a London nightclub on account of their skin tone and their weight. As a dark-skinned black woman, I was totally astonished. The fact that the world fails to see and value our beauty leaves me repeatedly dismayed. I made a connection between these moments in our history and became interested in exploring what an icon like Grace Jones could offer us, as we fight for a better future.
Grace Jones; a dark-skinned, androgynous, proud Jamaican woman, who became an international superstar and who has remained up there for decades despite, or perhaps because of her completely uncompromising approach. Nightclubs should be places where we can let go and allow our unbridled selves to be free, they should be spaces of liberation and revolution, not spaces of oppression.
Nightclubbing is inspired by and references intersectional feminism, seeking to represent the complex experience of living in a society which discriminates against so many of us on multiple levels. The work breaks down boundaries between art forms, allowing multiple layers of creative expression to overlap and interact continuously. Drawing on Afrofuturist ideas and aesthetics, the show carves out a space for hopefulness. It makes way for those who exist outside white, male, middle class, heterosexual, cisgendered, able-bodied, western ‘norms’ to imagine and look towards a different kind of future. A future when they can be their authentic selves, where they don’t have to leave parts of themselves at the door for fear of judgment or violence. There are certain people in our communities who are constantly shut down by the language used to describe them - labeled ‘difficult’, ‘aggressive’, ‘irrational’, their voices are silenced. As we shut them down, we shut down the possibility for conversation and breed ignorance.
People fail to take responsibility, become passive bystanders and allow the silencing and discrimination to continue. If we fail to call out intolerance nothing will change, we won’t manifest the fairer society we all need.
I hope that Nightclubbing creates a space for escapism and hope; I hope that audiences in Dublin will see themselves and their worlds represented, or find a new way of seeing the world. I hope that everyone can find resonance in an experience that takes place in a truly inclusive space and that the experience reinvigorates and recharges, making it possible to face the world fierce.
Nightclubbing is at Project Arts Centre, Dublin, on Thursday April 25th, as part of the Live Collision festival - find out more here.
