Edinburgh 2012

I have been here since Monday but that already seems like a life time.  It is a compression chamber here and I am grateful to the Olympics for reminding me there is a world beyond my own self absorption.  I am taking heart from the courage and concentration of the athletes.

The shows are going well with good press coverage and reviewers are coming in.  Most notably the Observer and Scotland on Sunday and those reviews will be out tomorrow.  Tonight The List are in as is The F-Word, a feminist blog.  I am very excited to read a review that has a feminist frame.  Audiences are responding well although I am fairly convinced that three male audience members didn't come for the Art.  One wore a kilt and no underwear and sat right in the front row displaying his tackle to me throughout the show.  

The show is an exploration of our ability to look beyond the female form.  It asks for an engagement to happen with the woman and her life..to lift her out of just being a body that became a painting.   It is strange to have to accept the male gaze when there is clearly no intention of them engaging with the show.  Performing the show every day, being naked in front of a room full of strangers everyday, setting myself up to be judged physically and artistically is tiring....it makes me very sensitive, well probably more sensitive to how women are still so sexualised.  Comments on facebook about female athletes that are not about their prowess but about their bodies and the fact of them wearing swimsuits don't seem benign or harmless, or the favourite excuse of ' just a joke'.  They seem to me to be about fear of women and that fear translating into a need to diminish women, to keep them just as 'form' and not as people. Anyway onwards and upwards. 

I am hoping that as the days progress the show will get stronger and I will find my daily rhythm.  The fantasy is for that rhythm to involve eating healthily, going to yoga classes and not drinking too much alcohol.  We'll see.