Jake Mace
An iconic, bold, and totally captivating envisioning of relationships to Trans identities is the offering in Ugly Sisters. I have not seen a piece of theatre that is quite so demanding which also manages to have such a clearly resonant, somehow endearing, pulse humming through it at all times. An abetted Germaine Greer, a fawning Trans woman, a leaf blower, a pair of 8 inch see-through heels – dirt, earth, soil, mud. This is gender mythmaking at its most apoplectic, visceral, and at times throughout, fun.
“Thank you… Thank you so much for all you’ve done for us girls.” is the quote pulled from an encounter recounted by Greer occurring on the day her totemic Feminist work The Female Eunuch is published. Performers Laurie Ward and Charli Cowgill slip, slide, and dive around a soiled playground over the hour as projections of phrases from Greer’s article blast over them. Identities, time, bodies, sensuous touch, all succumb to the embrace of the earth beneath their feet.
Leaning into elements of physical theatre, dance, and drag, the performers slip in and out of character as Germaine Greer, the other melding into the form that Greer sets up for her article in demeaning the Trans woman who approached her. piss / CARNATION imagine the moments leading up to that encounter, the preparation, from both sides. They envision a reunion between Greer and that woman in later life, how Greer waited years to publish anything about the encounter, how moulds of womanhood might have come to form both of their lives by that time.
Moulds, both gendered and otherwise, encapsulate the heart of this piece’s mythmaking ethos. From rolling around in the dirt we see presumptions surrounding bodies and identities dissolve and reform. Some may emerge renewed, some refuse to lie buried. These moments of abstraction don’t stick to the binary of envisioning solely abjection of those bodies and identities, but instead ask us to imagine the limits of these moulds that we place on each other. The ethos being that however wearily we cling to our idols, we must all come to terms with the fact that elements of the moulds we impose on ourselves and others will fracture, dissipate, and become whole again only through cathartic renaissance.
Outside the gorgeously abstract, the performers set out to make the audience complicit in the whole affair – the affair in this case being covering Germaine Greer in dirt, before she re-awakens to perform a lip sync vogue number. Later, an audience member is asked to plait Cowgill’s hair in a moment of poignant solidarity and affirmation. While the theatrical form of this piece might come across as abrasive or experimental at first we soon learn that parts of this story are designed to be a shared experience, akin to Boal’s vision of a Spect-Actorship, but with Ward and Cowgill leading us courageously, and fancifully, toward a meaningful, poised theatrical crescendo in the rest of the piece.
The performances are vivid, lived-in. Obscure but so deeply, intoxicatingly tangible. Not a moment of your time is spared. Your senses and sensibilities are heightened throughout this show, and as the adrenaline rushes through, you have no choice but to see the conceptual majesty born and re-born in the mud and the dirt.
Recommended Drink: Grab an extra glass of water for Germaine on your way in, would you?
Catch Ugly Sisters until August 25th (not the 19th) at Underbelly Cowgate – Big Belly from 18:30. Tickets are available through the EdFringe Box Office.
Phoebe Bakker
