Jenny Jennings is co-director of THISISPOPBABY and in her new show for their Where We Live festival she deftly applies the Dublin vernacular to Australian playwright Patricia Cornelius' blistering play S**T.
Below, Jenny (who is also directing the piece) writes for Culture about getting S**T done...
In Ireland, the phrase "throwing shapes" is slang for acting tough or showing off in an aggressive manner. Example: "Jaysus, that fella is throwing shapes to the security guard over there".
It also can refer to busting some whopper moves on the dance floor. As in: "Check out yer wan throwing some serious shapes there by the jacks."
From Malin Head to Mizen Head, shapes are thrown with great regularity – in every town and on every dance floor. But here, in Dublin city, I believe we’ve got a particular talent for shape-throwing.
Extreme, almost cartoonish, shapes abound – hustling down the street, landing a punchline, responding to a musical "drop", sealing a deal, getting your point very definitely across. This physical vernacular of ours – how people navigate the city and each other – can be brilliant, bizarre, hilarious and beautiful.
When I first saw the Australian play S**T in Sydney Festival in 2017, I immediately started wondering how it would look and feel if the physical vernacular of my hometown was applied to it. Whilst there is a universality to the stories of these three women, Bil, Bob and Sam, there is also a specific sensibility to the writing that feels very familiar – dark humour, athletic language and practically virtuosic cursing.
I thought: I know these women.
Thematically the piece covers realities and complexities that are both close to my heart and urgent today – ideas around social order, failing care systems, gender demarcations and how societies the world over mistreat women. The fury, the fire, the unrelenting irredeemable awfulness of these female characters greatly appeals – we rarely see such women on stage.
Indeed the writer Patricia Cornelius has a very clear stage note: There's not a single moment when the three young women transcend their ugliness. There’s no indication of a better or in fact any inner life. They don’t believe in anything. They’re mean, down mouthed, downtrodden, hard bit, utterly damaged women. They’re neither salt of the earth nor sexy. They love no one and no one loves them. They believe the world is s**t, that their lives are s**t, that they are s**t.
Having a great time in the #SHITthePlay rehearsal room with this bunch of nutters. Here is a daily character exercise we like to call "Rap Opera Showboat"@CompanyPhilipCo @aislingomara @NicNotKav @MissKateTweet @bairbrenihaodha #WhereWeLive2020 @thisispopbaby pic.twitter.com/cWkWCV33hU
— Jennifer Jennings (@JennyeJennings) February 26, 2020
But despite their unrelenting ugliness, we do feel for them, we do connect to their pain. Through them we feel the injustice and inhumanity of circumstance and luck. Because linguistically the piece shines – full of black humour, electric dialogue that can turn on a dime...and swearing, lots of delicious swearing. It’s nimble and ferocious and shines a light into the dark corners of these women’s lives, and of many women’s lives.
I’ve been working with the incredible choreographer Philip Connaughton to develop a physical language for our production, and acclaimed electronic artist Oberman Knocks to compose a sonic landscape, evoking both the built and the inner fabric of this world we are creating. In the shape-throwing, virtuosic-cursing department are three ferocious, fearless and fabulous actors – Kate Stanley Brennan, Aisling O’Mara and Nicky Kavanagh. The production also has a dream design team of Molly O’Cathain (costume), Jenny O’Malley (sound) and Where We Live festival designers Emmett Scanlon (set) and Sarah Jane Shiels (lighting).
💥ANNOUNCING: #WhereWeLive2020💥
— thisispopbaby (@thisispopbaby) January 22, 2020
A thrilling 10-day building takeover of @projectarts that investigates and celebrates how it feels to live right here in Dublin city, right now.
10 days | 22 events | 80+ Artists
All tix on sale 11am Friday 24 Jan:https://t.co/VmHrlPzXZL pic.twitter.com/nkFG1Ky36b
S**T is one of the theatre pieces in THISISPOPBABY’s second Where We Live festival. Sitting within St Patrick’s Festival, this is a (wildly) ambitious explosion of new work that interrogates and celebrates what it means and how it feels to live in Dublin and Ireland today.
At the heart of the festival is a passionate belief in the power of stories to provoke conversation, challenge prevailing positions, foster connection, create agency and engender community… the power to make us pause, rethink, reframe, and have a great night out in the process. Along with over 80 of some of the best storytellers and makers on the Island, we’re taking over and transforming Project Arts Centre in a red-hot building occupation of new theatre, exhilarating music collaborations, rapid-response performance, playful and evocative visual art installations, an iconic one-off record fair, a town hall of ideas, and as always, we’ll be throwing some shapes on the dance floor to top it all off.
We’ll meet you there.
Jenny Jennings directs the Irish premiere of Patricia Cornelius’ S**T for the Where We Live Festival 2020 (as part of St Patrick’s Festival), running at Project Arts Centre (11-14 March) - find out more here.
