Interview: Louise Orwin

Artist and theatremaker Louise Orwin visits the Wardrobe Theatre this week with A Girl & A Gun, her witty, provocative look at the relationship between women and violence in media, starring Louise Orwin and a different male performer at each show.

In the Sixties, French New Wave filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard famously claimed that all he needed to make a film was a girl and a gun. Louise got to thinking about this – and about how the media’s portrayal of women has moved on in the 50 years since he made his claim. And she really wasn’t sure that the movement has been positive.

A Girl And A Gun is a live multimedia performance structured as a live film-making experiment. Louise performs the show with a different local male guest co-star performer at every show. Here she is to tell us more.

Briefly, how has the media’s portrayal of women moved in on those 50 years since Godard’s comment? What’s been progress and what really hasn’t?
If I’m honest I’m not sure we have moved on very much at all. It’s clear that we are much more discursive around these topics, and it’s great that there tends to be much more good feminist content written and available to all online: but when you scan films, music videos, television and advertising it’s hard to see much progress.
That’s not to say that there aren’t more films being made with great female characters now, but I’m afraid they are still definitely in the minority. We need to keep pushing though – once the content creators realise that public tastes and thinking are changing significantly they will have to follow suit.

Can you tell us about the types of interactions you have with the male co-star each night?
The beauty of this show is that the interaction between me and my co-star varies HUGELY each night. You might see moments of intimacy, of risk, of kindness and of cruelty. One thing’s for sure, though: there will always be moments which have the audience guffawing, and almost certainly moments that make you hide behind your hands.
I’ve found that audiences tend to relate to the male character – he is almost one of them, and they think themselves into his role. ‘What would I have done if I was asked to do that? How would I have reacted in that moment?’ In this way it becomes a device to truly bring the audience into the material, experiencing every moment for themselves as well as for the performers.

A Girl and A Gun Teaser Trailer from Louise Orwin on Vimeo.

You’ve talked about being simultaneously repulsed and attracted to the sexy-gun-totin’-girl image. Unpack those two contrary emotions for us.
I’ve always been a fan of film, and in particular to the kind of female roles that one might call femmes fatales. These are the badass women who are often beautiful, toting weapons, are deadly and seemingly powerful. Growing up, I think I longed for the kind of power that these women seemed to harness on film.
However, as my politics developed it became harder not to question these roles. I began to wonder whether these women were actually empowered, I wondered why they always had to be beautiful, and I wondered who they were in service to. Answer: (often) the male character.  I guess in many ways, the show tries to work through this kind of thinking. Can a woman in this role ever be empowered?

Would you call the tone of the performance… witty? Angry? Provocative? Or does it depend on each night’s chemistry between you and your co-star?
The tone of the production sways from light and tongue-in-cheek, to sexy and bold, to dark and thorny. It is different depending on the male performer’s choices and performances, but I would say it is always a combination of these things. I will say, though, that the performance given by my co-star can really amp up the comedy, sexual tension, or awkwardness – depending on the performer!

What impacts do you hope shows like this and your previous show Pretty Ugly might have – on audience’s thoughts, feelings, actions, responses to the media around them?
I always want to make work that is discursive, rather than didactic. I want people to leave the theatre wanting to talk about the work, to argue about the ideas in it. I want there to be something of the show that stays with them, long after they’ve left the theatre. An image, or a phrase, that niggles at them. Audiences tell me that they can never watch their favourite films in the same way again, or that it has changed their thinking on a certain subject. This is one of the most important things in my work: I ask people to try and see their world and the things they take for granted in it anew. With Pretty Ugly, this was the way we see and treat teenage girls in society: with this show, it’s about our appetite for sex and violence on film.

How do you get these messages across as accessibly as possible?
That said, it’s not all doom and gloom. I always try and make work which is accessible to all – through humour, through pop culture references. I believe that if I’m going to make political work I should try and reach as big an audience as possible, and by reeling people in with familiar music or fun dialogue, or references to pop culture from their childhood, I can make them feel as if they are part of the conversation – which, of course, they absolutely should be.

A Girl and a Gun is at the Wardrobe Theatre on Wednesday, November 2. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.thewardrobetheatre.com/livetheatre/a-girl-a-gun For more on Louise, visit louiseorwin.com 

Top pic: Field and McGlynn