Switch Theatre, Playing the Victim, Unbound, London, 2007. Photo: Courtesy of the artists.
Kinky In Progress: Conversations With Switch Theatre
Dim light, minimal décor, menacing sounds – and one solo woman with monastic clothes and her head covered. She is seated on her knees on a kind of metallic stage; her wrists bound using SM paraphernalia. Close to her, a man --also anonymous by hiding his face and body-- is seated. We are witnessing a performance entitled Playing the Victim by new company Switch. We do not quite know yet what will happen, and we wonder if this potentially disturbing scene is in fact consensual SM practice; especially if we take into account Switch’s interest in kinky performances. “The nightmare of male violence or the beauty of one woman’s pleasure?”
The performance results disturbing because it refers to an experience we can all relate to: the experience of pain. It could seem vastly accepted the rejection of painful experiences, especially those that are provoked by a third person. However, even if we are sensible to acts that pertain suffering, Switch remind us that the experience of pain is decisively shaped or modified by individual human minds and by specific human cultures. The artistic company also reveals an approach to the experience of pain that is mainly lived in secret. The history of pain they recount is one of secrecy and silence, because it is erotic and sexual and because it is considered “perverted” or “abnormal”. They engage in the process of publicly representing our pleasurable encounters with pain.
Switch is a company dedicated to new forms of performance, including progressive theatre, live art and queer cabaret, and its goal is to challenge the given, to find new ways of expression. The company has directed several shows that deal with the taboo world of Sadomasochism, where pain openly, violently, and irreversibly breaks into the arena of sexual pleasure. For instance, Perverts Progress was a 30-minute choreographed fashion show that portrayed a young couple entering the fetish scene for the first time. As described by the company, in each segment, they meet a different ‘type’ of player on the scene, including swing-dancing swingers, a naughty nurse, a domme [dominatrix] and her sub, a drag king and two gay men. In the climax, their vanilla clothes were ripped off to reveal stunning fetish outfits beneath. In Behind Closed Doors the main female character, abused as a child, can discover her kinky nature – or not. Three audience members decide which way the action should go during the play; so the paths diverge on different nights. Will she find a solution to this abuse of power as a dominatrix? Switch has also previously produced the festival Kinkfest.
Playing the Victim performed for the first time at the launch of Unbound on November 2nd, 2007 (Contemporary Art Platform, Finsbury Park, London) and, after being selected by Fierce Festival, at Warwick Arts Centre on May 25th, 2008 (Birmingham). This interview has been an ongoing conversation since the first performance.
You told me that although you come from the theatre world you are more welcome within the artistic circles, as performers…How has been the artistic institutions’ reaction to you performances so far?
We are still a young company and we are finding our place in the UK art scene, so it is hard to say. However, in terms of our “extreme” practice, we have found more of a home within fine art and live art contexts than in the more conventional world of London theatre.
An example of this is that fact that Spirit + Flesh UK, a programme of work we curated and produced around Fakir Musafar, received funding from the visual arts/live art department of Arts Council England. Within the context of live art Fakir’s work is important; we are not sure it would have received such a good reception within a theatre setting.
Although it is hard to generalise, it is possible that fine art audiences are more open to this kind of work because they have had more exposure to it – for example in the work of Marina Abramovich, Franko B, Stelarc, Orlan, Kira O’Reilly and the like. British Theatre has not allowed itself as much to explore extreme subject matter. It’s possible that this stems, in part, from there not being enough exceptional theatre that questions, dissects and explores SM.
What is it about kinky and queer performances that interest you?
Our work is broad-ranging and we don’t like to pigeon-hole ourselves. However both of us are interested in raising questions around alternative sexualities (among other things) and our work sometimes reflects this.
(Justin) For me, as someone who is “out” as queer and kinky, the work I make around these subjects is natural because these are part of my lifestyle. It is similar to a gay artist making work that explores gay themes and subject-matter; or a woman making work about the significance of being female. This work raises the questions that interest me as a kinky person, trying to find my place in the world – and hopefully will speak to others in similar situations, as well as those who know little or nothing about the subjects presented.
(Ewelina) For me this type of work also shows a parallel to ways of seeing, understanding and misunderstanding others’ private spaces, especially those that we create within relationships. It explores the dynamic between the privacy and publicness of personal rules and games that we play and create.
Playing the Victim is very much created for a fine art context and audience. We both feel that this piece makes more sense when presented to an open-minded, non-kinky audience, as it asks fundamental questions about consensual SM that those audiences might never have considered.
It also raises awareness about the contradictory and illogical laws in the UK around extreme sensation in a sexual context; an awareness that is already present within the diverse BDSM / fetish communities in the UK.
What is exactly Switch Cabaret for Switch?
Switch Cabaret is a lighter strand of our practice – the light to Switch Extreme’s dark. One of the reasons we enjoy it is because of the immediate feedback we get when performing cabaret. As some of our work is dark and uncomfortable, audiences don’t always applaud and tell us they enjoyed it. With cabaret, we know when we’ve hit the mark because the audience cheers, laughs and claps. So it’s fun for us to make this lighter work, it keeps us smiling.
You deal with issues such as manipulation, and who is really in control, about the deceitfulness of appearances, and about sexual freedom (that implies sexual slavery)…What do you think about the violence against women that we hear about everyday in the news? Has anybody confront you with this issue? How do you respond to that?
We have had some questions and some comments, and we expect more as we continue to explore these themes. It is very important to us that people ask those questions, and develops a richer, fuller understanding of what violence is – and what it isn’t.
For us it is important that things don’t get lumped together. As you say, some of our work questions appearances and asks audiences to look deeper, to think about where their pre-conceptions might have trapped them into simplifying complex issues. Playing the Victim is particularly important in these terms, as it uses live art’s interrogation of the illusion of theatre as a medium for questioning current thinking about “violence” against women.
What is important is that we don’t allow media sensationalism to simplify complex issues and make the appearance of violence the same as the real thing. They are different, and the difference is always about consent.
Having said all that it is very important for us to also say this: we are aware that a great deal of violence is perpetrated against women on a daily basis. We recognise this, and we feel it is important that there is an ongoing effort to stop it. We also admire work that engages directly with these issues, for example the theatre of violence produced by the British company Badac. (1)
In general, do you think SM relationships are condemned because of this “other side of the story”?
People in SM relationships do need to be careful about how open they are with their lifestyle, and who they talk to about it – especially if the submissive partner is female. Again the parallel to gay lifestyle is relevant – SM is another taboo that is being challenged, and gradually things will change.
Behind… explores the emotional path that leads to the S & M scene for one young woman. Eloisa has been abused as a kid and now she (this is one possible path of the story) reproduces the same attitude: the torturer tortured. This is a real consequence. What is your opinion about it?
We made it clear in this piece that she could become kinky in a healthy positive way and use SM to heal herself of her past; or kinky in an unhealthy negative way and use SM as a way to abuse others. This is really important because like most things, SM can be used or abused depending on the person. So we tried to create a piece of theatre that somehow reflected that – although you had to watch it more than once to see the different possible outcomes.
How does your public react? Do women and men react in the same way?
People have mixed feelings. Some find it hard to watch some of our work, others find it beautiful, others still find it bewildering. I think it is safe to say that few are unaffected by what we create. I don’t really know about men’s and women’s reactions – to be honest I never thought about it before.
Why in Playing the Victim, the victim is a woman and not a man? (any reason for that?)
The “victim” in the piece is an individual who happens to be female. The piece was inspired by this particular woman, who has an extremely high pain threshold and gains great pleasure from being beaten. It was also important for us that she giggles when she is beaten, as this juxtaposition (the appearance of violence and her happy laughter) is very confusing for audiences – in a good way!
We feel that beyond gender there are individuals, and one of the things we really want to explore with this piece is the breadth of individual sexual preference and how important it is for society to permit and celebrate this diversity.
So we prefer to think that the victim is an individual called CC (CC Parkinson) rather than that she is a woman. And she is certainly not a representative of all womankind – although we deliberately make her appear that way at the start of the piece.
The design and direction of the performance is by Ewelina but the original idea is by Justin. Does it make any difference if a man or a woman creates a “kinky” performance?
We don’t think it makes a difference. Playing the Victim was a true collaboration, a meeting of minds and ideas. For me as the originator of the idea it was wonderful to have Ewelina’s input – we agree on the basic premise but she also has her own ideas and opinions around the topic. CC was also amazing in terms of her input, so we really created something together that was more than what any one of us could have made on our own.
Is the pain real or fake?
I find it quite hard to make sense of that question. When I show pictures of the Spirit + Flesh UK ritual people always ask “does that hurt?” This doesn’t mean much to me because pain is not a constant, it is relative.
If the question means “Was CC really beaten?” then the answer is yes. I think that is clear and explicit within the piece, because by the end of it she is covered in marks and bruises. However, if the question is about whether she was hurt against her will, then obviously the answer is no – she consented to it both as a performer and as an individual.
Ultimately it is a very important question because it is at the heart of what the piece is about. However, I think what is more important here is whether the intense sensation was consensual or not, and what we did to ensure everyone’s physical and psychological safety before, during and after the performance.
Right now you are involved in a project called my site | in space that you define as a site-specific adventure for groups of artists. Is your interest in pain and pleasure part of an adventurous personality (that you have)?
Possibly! Both of us love to explore new things and to experiment, and that is why we are friends and professional partners.
In my site | in space artists are introduced to a space and given almost no time to develop performances in response to it. Soon after it is made the work is curated into a show, which is presented to an audience within a few days. What kind of artists does participate/ is there a subject matter?
The artists we work with come from different disciplines, although the project does attract a lot of live artists. It is hard to say what the common thread is, but there seem to be a lot of creative people out there asking similar questions to us – what is performance? What is audience? What is art?
By inviting artists to explore a space we allow the space itself to become the subject matter, and for those questions to arise naturally out of the space and the individual artists’ practice.
What is next for Switch?
my site | in space remains our main collaboration. We love this project, which creates beautiful work fast and produces lasting collaborations and partnerships. We have found it consistently fruitful for us in both ways, and have had excellent feedback from both artists and audience members.
In May we curated and produced a one-off performance night around the work of Charles Gatewood, for exciting new company À rebours. Gatewood has faithfully documented some of the strangest and most fascinating people and activities of our times. Gatewood’s work remains as radical and exciting as ever. His visit in May was his first time in the UK in 36 years. This was a great opportunity for Switch to collaborate with an exciting new company on a great project – watch this space.
We also hope to present Playing the Victim in fine art and site-specific settings in 2008. We are currently in discussions with a Spanish curator regarding a group show in Madrid; and we will look for suitable settings closer to home.
Ewelina will present some scratch performances during the year for the new Sensory Theatre project, which will form a new strand of our work later in the year. These scratch performances will be announced once they are confirmed. And I (Justin) am currently doing a 5-week site-specific residency in Hockney, London. During the residency I am being mentored by artist Rajni Shah, and I am collaborating with emerging photographer Kate Peters.
Thank you very much for giving us your time and attention. We truly appreciate it.
At the conclusion of this interview Justin Allen and Ewelina Kolaczec have just presented the performance Mehetabel, documented by artist Kate Peters.
