by Laura Kressly
Safaris evoke the dynamic of the self and the opposite, the watcher and the watched. As an exercise, it has a colonial legacy the place the ‘civilised’ journey to faraway lands to look at ‘exotic’ folks and wildlife of their native habitat. More broadly, contemplating safari’s facet of watching, it hyperlinks to the gendered phenomenon of the male gaze. In this quick efficiency piece-cum-installation, these differing, modern conceptualisations of the safari converge, prompting the viewers to think about how girls’s our bodies – particularly these from the Global Majority – are exoticised, othered and preyed on in a white supremacist, heteropatriarchal society.
Each member of the viewers wears headphones, by means of which we first hear chicken tune and a person’s voiceover of the type heard on nature documentaries. This narration is anthropological in content material; it positions people as herd animals in what transforms into an city panorama. It notably makes some extent by having a person within the place of authority who pronounces info about human habits when the performers are girls. The sensitively designed binaural and encompass sound design appears to come back from all instructions. The two girls within the house evoke a tribal folks as they smear lipstick on themselves like camouflage, or warfare paint. It’s evident that, with the person’s observations and ladies performers, that we’re to think about how we understand these girls’s our bodies on the earth round them and that they’re very a lot distinct others from the viewers.
The sound then shifts to what’s presumably verbatim testimony from girls in regards to the harassment they face in public areas and the measures they take to remain protected. The encounters they voice are seemingly recognisable to all girls; this makes it appear the present/set up is a didactic expertise for cis males who haven’t skilled gendered abuse or harassment. Yet, in direction of the tip we’re invited to think about after which share our personal tales of harassment and abuse – so maybe the goal of the piece is extra for ladies, and serves a therapeutic or cathartic perform. In any case, there’s potential profit for each ends of the gender binary, although the content material may, in fact, be triggering. It additionally doesn’t handle the violence that nonbinary, trans and gender nonconforming folks face.
The manufacturing’s message is sharp and to the purpose, if usually on the nostril. The lipstick on the ladies’s our bodies additionally suggests blood, or on the very least, violence. Male gaze is explicitly mentioned within the audio, together with girls’s expression of how they really feel being checked out – there’s no subtext right here. The quick size additionally doesn’t give the artists a whole lot of time to discover the difficulty in a lot depth. An extended occasion would permit for a deeper exploration of the difficulty, but it surely successfully makes its level inside the time it has.
Safari is a touring manufacturing that has beforehand run at Camden People’s Theatre, Theatre Deli, Battersea Arts Centre and RUNT Performance Art.
The Play’s the Thing UK is dedicated to protecting fringe and progressive theatre in London and past. It is run solely voluntarily and wishes common assist to make sure its survival. For extra data and to assist The Play’s the Thing UK present protection of the theatre that wants critiques probably the most, visit its patreon.
