Circus / circus city
Review: Circus City: Contra, Arnolfini
The female body is a site of controversy and contradictions, of contested ownership, and all too often of abuse. Women live their lives surrounded by sexist culture manifest in cinema, music, and advertising. They have to explain their body hair to men on public transport and kick men’s bicycles in the street if they shout, ‘Smile!’.
Well, those last two cases specifically apply to Laura Murphy, who performed at Arnolfini over the weekend as part of Circus City 2019. Laura’s solo show Contra blends stand-up, performance art, circus, and naked Irish dance. It is part personal monologue, part biology lesson, and part sharp critique on how the female body is objectified, controlled, fetishised by society. It’s hilarious – and damning.
Pic: Aphra Evans
Murphy is naked for the entire show, occasionally in a vulnerable way, but her nakedness is designed to be confrontational, too. She wraps herself in clingfilm, packaging herself like the product that capitalism is trying to make of her, to the song You’re My Meat by Louis Jordan. She mouths along sarcastically to a chauvinistic stand-up set by an unidentified male comedian. She talks about a lifetime of heartbreak, rape, orgasms, and discussions of lesbian sex over brunch with her mother.
is needed now More than ever
At her most vulnerable moments, she moves up and down the corde lisse naked, the phallic symbol wrapped around her, trapping her, and surely harming her bare skin. But by the end of the show her style changes: she begins to assert herself over it, to prove her strength over it, despite the state of society around her.
At one point Laura Murphy “wraps herself in clingfilm, packaging herself like the product that capitalism is trying to make of her”
The show is a searing critique of how society views and values women’s bodies, charting everything from Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to jazz and Hollywood cinema (where women stranded on desert islands miraculously never grow any body hair) and finally Ed Sheeran’s chart-topping declaration that he is in love with some poor woman’s shape.
Then, like some bizarre inspirational feminist strip show in reverse, Laura clothes herself, and leaves the stage to uproarious applause.
Laura Murphy performed Contra at Arnolfini on Oct 18 & 19 as part of Circus City 2019 (to Nov 2, various venues). For the rest of the Circus City lineup visit www.bristolcircuscity.com/whats-on
Read more: Preview: Circus City 2019
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