The Made in Canberra season continues with The Girls – Unadulterated Cabaret, produced by Dianna Nixon’s company Wild Voices, in association with the Street Theatre. The Street Theatre, again, can take credit for supporting yet another original work from local talent. The performance was devised by the show’s performers Dianna Nixon, Leah Baulch, Hanna Cormick and Hannah Ley and directed by Nixon. The performance commences with the “girls” who emerge in their underwear and through movement, song (including original compositions), monologues and various costume changes explore their own experiences as well as those of the subjects of their performed songs.

The show’s title regrettably evokes pre-pubescent subjectivity. The adult equivalent is The Women which evokes the 1939 Hollywood classic film, mainly set in a beauty parlour. Interestingly, too, The Girls’ mise-en-scene demonstrates a preoccupation with grooming but is limited to the private boudoir.

Sarah Kaur’s design is well complemented by Peter Butz’ sensitive lighting design and whilst visually and olfactorily pleasing (the scent of the flowers was delightful) the set restricts the semiotics to a mere juxtaposition of dressing tables, confining the female subjects to the domestic arena and the repeated ritual of applying makeup. The girls, too, play dress ups. Women’s experience is reduced to childhood play and an absence of meaningful participation in the public sphere.

It seems that in 21st century Canberra, women have taken a step backwards from the 1939 film setting. Whereas the female characters in The Women have nothing better to do than to be preoccupied with their own narratives at least they are let outside.

The Street’s cabaret The Girls can be seen as emerging from a development of feminist theatre in western culture during the late 1970s and 1980s which sought to gain visibility of women performers and histories. The mantra that the “personal was political” legitimatised the framing of performers’ own stories, through a range of genres, including cabaret. However, the emphasis on personal histories and its accompanying aesthetics has been recently and necessarily problematised by interventions from female performance artists from the Third World and Indigenous communities.

One can witness this creative tension at international female performance festivals such as The Magdalena Project and the International Women’s Playwrights Conference where women from marginalised cultures have deservedly argued the right to use theatre for their own hitherto unheard narratives. As a result, feminist homogeneity has given way to a pluralistic mode of feminism. Given that the aesthetic of the personal biography now seems to be justifiably reserved for women from marginalised cultures, Western feminist theatre has since understood the need to move away from the view that “personal experience is truth” to the analysis of the material and social conditions that construct gender. Alternatively, current western feminist theatre has also represented the difficulty in inhabiting a single, unified subject position. Instead, playwrights such as UK’s Deborah Levy, Australia’s Karen Corbett, Jenny Kemp and Christine Evans explore a female split subject.

The production of The Girls, in 2010, disavows these recent and crucial developments in women’s theatre. If The Girls was performed for a 1980s audience then the experience would be innovative and exciting. Unfortunately though, director, Diana Nixon, and her cast of devisors, have created The Girls without an understanding of the evolution of women’s theatre practice which their predominantly female middle-aged audience has witnessed over the last 25 years.

Amidst radical technological developments which assist intercultural communication, we are now aware of broader human rights concerns. Therefore, it is pushing it to expect spectators to empathise with The Girls middle-class cast who lament relationship break ups and/or the loss of careerist-led goals. This is not to say, of course, that these episodes do not resonate profoundly with the individuals who experienced them, nor to deny their need to recount such deep disappointment. However, the stage is no longer the place for this kind of catharsis because the result makes for neither good therapy nor good theatre.

Similarly, the performers’ attempt at audience participation seems to be based a power relationship instead of genuine sisterly affinity. Hanna Cormick’s attempt at conversation with an audience member gives way to Cormick’s autobiographical monologue. Leah Baulch, on another occasion, forecasts the disposal of her audience participants by telling them that they will know when it is time to go. There is nothing wrong with these techniques in the light of those of performers from previous Australian cabaret acts Los Trio Ringbarkus and The Doug Anthony Allstars, for example, who were known to treat their spectators with disrespect. The point is that the “girls” want their audience to empathise with them and their narratives. This is a hard ask when they hierarchise their subjectivity over that of their audience with apparent disregard.

The re-interpretation of songs from popular culture is a well-used and often effective cabaret technique. However the “girls” revisioning of the 1960s cringe-worthy pop song, He Hit Me (and It Felt Like a Kiss) has been previously performed by US rock band Hole as part of MTV’s Unplugged series. It was then poor judgement for the performers to attempt this number when Hole’s lead singer, Courtney Love, the queen of angst had already successfully nailed this political re-interpretation in front of a global television audience 15 years ago.

The cast members of The Girls demonstrate their versatile talent and highly focussed professionalism. However, in order for this work, and that of Wild Voices’ future projects, to resonate with spectators, the creators need to demonstrate analysis of their generated meaning, including an understanding that their audience deserves an original, theatrical experience. The cast and director of The Girls, then, need to grow up, venture away from their dressing room mirrors, go outside and breathe the air from the winds of herstory.

Image above: Leah Baulch with Hannah Ley in Background
Photo by Lorna Sim

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