the trouble with today's women
the trouble with today's women
After finishing Teeth Have A Memory, I was reluctant to do any further advocacy based on my life experiences in my work mainly because of how debilitating and emotionally draining it was. The Trouble With Today's Women presented itself as a brilliant opportunity for MZL Productions (my theatre and film production company) to collaborate with Bread Theatre and Film Company at The University of Cambridge to write, direct, and perform in the first-ever WOC devised piece of theatre at The ADC, so I made an exception. I dove right back into my life and the lives of others for the sake of art. I did this as an Artist-in-Residence and we still had to adhere to strict COVID19 rules so the added challenge was collaborating over Zoom, then eventually rehearsing in a space together and performing on stage with social distancing, of course.
The wonderful thing about devising is that the pressure to do-it-all gets taken away. The writing process was a collaboration and as a director I encouraged all chosen participants to truly find their voice, and say what they really wanted to say. This resulted in a considerable amount of autobiographical material coming to the table, and in my case (since I performed in this piece as well), I chose to discuss reproductive rights, my personal experience with abortion, and what it means to be openly pro-choice. Ultimately each woman (it was an all-female cast, just like Teeth) shared monologues and scenes that outlined some personal trouble of theirs and demanded it be recognised for its contemporary significance. It was an extension of Teeth in the sense that we created a surrealist vision, at a high-table in Cambridge, to break down, at least on stage, a powerful power structure that many remain oblivious to. Oblivious, or complicit. It was deeply significant for me because my experiences as a women of colour from my earliest days in Britain, made many choices I've made and ways I've had to cope, incredibly hard.
Throughout this entire process I fought an incredibly challenging, and personal, legal battle with the UK Government. It incorporated significant details regarding my mental health history, which continues today - it took another year for me to finally be properly diagnosed, after a year of proving I was innocent for several difficult circumstances I had found myself in including, but not limited to, sexual and substance abuse, as well as abortion.
Whilst I have now made a promise to discontinue using autobiographical material in my work Trouble will always remain special as it was a tribute to my incredibly firm decision to advocate for women's rights, to remain as international as possible, and to shun those who oppose these decisions and way of thinking. That's why I use lived experience because until you know what it actually feels like you can't possibly understand what the right or wrong moral course of action is for someone else's life, which today, is still being so easily decided and enforced on women all over the world.
Sadly, this entire process has felt like a loss. The loss lies in the knowledge that you may never fully be accepted for your beliefs and thereby life choices, that you must endure the brutality of judgment, that your honesty may banish you from certain places, that the lack of an option would change the course of your life so dramatically that you couldn't even imagine what you would do. That's why, if possible, it is best to make sure you have options, in case it doesn't work out. In case you end up being unaccepted,
which is an extremely painful reality to be confronted with, and I wanted this situation, which is not unique to me, to be public. To break the silence that I know too many women silently suffer the consequences of. I have suffered for a long time.
I have been told my transparency is naive and this deep preoccupation with the self is dangerous and risky. I perhaps walked away from luck in order to do this. From stability. From greater professional opportunity. Maybe that is incredibly naive, because I suppose I'm saying to the public: I haven't been able to handle my life, I have broken down, I have failed, and in a way this is my way of redeeming myself.
Those who will judge and those who will hate and those who will disagree can do so. I repeat, my transparency may have been foolish. However, I have evolved as an artist, and the path this play sent me on was one of radical defiance, of loneliness, but also awareness that I needed deep healing, and I need something much more than the thrill and stability of instantaneous success.
A big thank you to the lovely women who through this work of art made me feel normal, humanised, and understood. They are featured in the photographs above alongside the poster of the show in black and white, which mixed, is the ephemeral grey of life.