Hey folks!
Liv from VIMH here. I’m going to be producing a project later this year called let bleeding girls lie at La Mama Courthouse (8-19 December 2021) and I want to make sure that it is taking place in conversation with my community.
What is it?
let bleeding girls lie is about the transformational impact of a single encounter between Lou, Juice and Grace, three strangers sitting beside each other as they donate plasma at the Collins Street blood bank in Melbourne. It’s early morning, and they’re making small talk. This shatters when news breaks on the breakfast TV program screening throughout the centre – a deadly stadium bombing, targeting a pop concert’s audience of pre-teen girls.
The newscast creates a tear in the reality of the space as all three women imagine being trapped in the stadium. This shared imagined space is dark, horrifying, focused on the obliterating effects of fear on the body. We cut rapidly back and forth between this space and the women in the blood bank watching the first reports of the attack.
The flashing scenes stop as suddenly as they start and their small talk transforms into one long unfolding conversation that is marked by a grief-induced intimacy. The newscast has triggered a visceral experience of fear and loss in each of them and they seek to mediate this by reaching out to each other.
The scenario for let bleeding girls lie occurred to me when my partner Julian and I were at the Collins Street Blood Bank in May 2017. Jules was donating plasma during the first 90 minutes of the Manchester Arena attack and we watched as hundreds of bleeding girls streamed out of a stadium, 17,000kms away.
The attack targeted pop star Ariana Grande and her fanbase of adolescent girls and its reportage was broadcast globally. I am using this global framework to explore the daily lived reality of gendered violence, the ever-present and continuous threat of if it in public space. Now more than ever, the lack of structural support means that management of this threat falls to those who are threatened. let bleeding girls lie offers the intimacy between these three women – their reaching out to each other – as a management strategy.
let bleeding girls lie is the final part of a trilogy of plays (my sister feather [2018] and I sat and waited but you were gone too long [2016]) which explore the experience of grief and loss in the female body and how women connect with each other in public space. I have been developing a text-based theatre making practice with the same ensemble of artists through the production of this body of work, as I try to explore alternative modes of being together in both content and process.
And?
I want to open up this work to other artists who might be interested in engaging with it and I’m very open to what this might look like. This could include:
- creating an assistant director position;
- running workshops, on the bleeding girls writing/making process, VIMH’s working practice, or idea generation and development;
- other options that cover your specific interest(s) that might intersect with the project.
How can I get involved?
Shoot me an email at thevoiceinmyhands@gmail.com with your contact details, some information about yourself, and what you’d like to get out of the experience and/or how you think the project might intersect with your interests. I’m going to do my best to accommodate anyone/everyone who is keen to be involved.
Liv x
vimh 