KATE HUTCHINSON:
Images: Nylons & Swimsuits.

D. COLE OSSANDON:
Poems: Feminism Dot Com & Third Wave Feminism

HELEN HAJNOCZKY:
Visual poems: One & Two.

ZOË PAGE:
Radical Vulvas Montreal: Thoughts on Feminist Performance Space.

SANDRA ALLAND / Y. JOSEPHINE:
Video: Slippery
Audio: After the phonecall & After going out

LIZ HOWARD:
Essay on her men a re c o m b i n a u t e u r a t i o n

KARLENE HARVEY:
Image: Foxhead,
Poems: Here with you & Starving Rabbits,
Image: Oceans and Oceans.

CHRISTINE SY:
Two poems: wonderbread whiteboy & You bring the Fur, I’ll bring the sugar

PENN KEMP / ANNE ANGLIN:
Flux, Flash, Flood
(text by Kemp, performance by Kemp & Anglin).

KIM GOLDBERG:
a poem

Contributor Bios (for online & print New Feminisms dossier).

“Serenity” is part of The Twisted She Project, an intermedia collaborative performance cycle that plays with themes of perversion, popularity, and pathology all funneled through conventional and unconventional performances of femininity. Although the written components of The Twisted She Project are predominantly based on autobiographical material, the aim in presenting this material is not a form of self-therapy. Rather, by integrating elements of many forms into this text-based performance, by inviting collaborators to produce sound and visual interpretations of the writing and performance, and by working with the themes and tropes embedded in the history of feminist and queer poetry and performance art, the autobiographical nature of this work is itself twisted in order to interrupt the notion of autoBiography as a form of unified truth.

“Red” is part of The Twisted She Project, an intermedia collaborative performance cycle that plays with themes of perversion, popularity, and pathology all funneled through conventional and unconventional performances of femininity. Although the written components of The Twisted She Project are predominantly based on autobiographical material, the aim in presenting this material is not a form of self-therapy. Rather, by integrating elements of many forms into this text-based performance, by inviting collaborators to produce sound and visual interpretations of the writing and performance, and by working with the themes and tropes embedded in the history of feminist and queer poetry and performance art, the autobiographical nature of this work is itself twisted in order to interrupt the notion of autoBiography as a form of unified truth.

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Two and a half years ago I jumped at the opportunity to co-organize the Montreal edition of a performance called the Radical Vulvas. I was seventeen, and my knowledge of feminist issues came almost entirely from my grandmother’s stories from the front line of the second wave. A lot has changed since then, and today I am preoccupied with the question, “Is my vulva radical enough?” My questions center primarily on the creation of the feminist performance space – the politics of representation, inclusion and exclusion, as well as the implications of my social location on my capacity as organizer.

The Radical Vulvas was originally conceived as a response the Eve Ensler play The Vagina Monologues. Organizers at the Dalhousie Women’s Center in Halifax, Nova Scotia took issue with Ensler’s choice to reduce the experience of womanhood to one’s relationship to their vagina. The organizers also felt that the production tokenized certain groups of women (trans women, women of colour) and created the allusion of a unified feminist community. They[1] came up with the idea for a “write your own,” cabaret-style performance that would be open to everyone, not just people with vaginas. The event would also include space for discussion and reflection in the audience as a whole, as well as a brief open mic portion. The production has since evolved and spread from Victoria to Montreal and Ottawa, with different organizers in each city. These days, rarely is it referred to as a derivative of the Ensler play, except perhaps in conversations with people for whom the word “vulva “ is somehow profoundly offensive and/or completely startling.

In conversations amongst the collective, we have tried to pin down the goals of the Radical Vulvas – what sort of “change” we would like to effect in our world. We have rejected the idea that the show needs to be a “transformative” experience for all involved. We are not looking to persuade people or change minds about a particular issue within feminism. The Radical Vulvas isn’t explicitly about awareness raising, nor is it about activism, in the traditional sense of the word at least. Rather, the structure of the show suggests an emphasis on the creation of a feminist dialogue. At the beginning of the show, the organizers encourage members of the audience to engage in a conversation following each performance to praise or criticize the performer’s opinion and/or tactics, or to simply raise a related point about the issue at hand. We practice this in a spirit of resistance against the traditional talkback, as it doesn’t necessarily require the performer to justify their words or actions, nor does it ask them to talk about their writing process, but rather attempts to include others in meaning making processes of the specific issues discussed in the performance, while still respecting the performer. We use this format in hopes that it not only draws attention to the diversity of opinions within feminism, but also enacts a form of feminist praxis which refuses to value one point of view over another. I often find in conversations with other self-identified feminists, that we have a tendency to want to classify opinions by wave, placing newer feminisms at a higher regard. We criticize “antiquated” feminist goals in favour of the flavour (read: struggle) of the week. What emerges is the devaluing of feminist work of previous generations, and from other perspectives in general. I do not mean to say that there is no need to critique the feminisms of yore and to chart the movement away from exclusionary versions which perpetuate racism, classism, homophobia etc. The collective hopes that the effect of these discussions will be felt outside of the discrete space of the show – that they will continue into the “real” world.

However, I want to think about something else the Radical Vulvas “does” which has previously only been described in vague terms – something that Jill Dolan has called “utopian performatives” (Dolan 2001: 460). Dolan defines utopia as “that boundless no-place where the social scourges that currently plague us – might be ameliorated, cured, redressed, resolved, never to haunt us again.” The Utopian performative is not a construction of utopia itself, but rather a fleeting moment during which the audience and performers are able to experience what it would feel like to live in a utopia. (Dolan 2001: 456-57). In the aftermath of both Montreal performances, audience members have alluded to a feeling of collective euphoria, profound emotional release, or a sense of deep comfort. Dolan draws upon Victor Turner’s idea of “communitas” -or “the moments in a theater event…in which the audience or participants feel themselves become part of the whole in an organic, nearly spiritual way” (Dolan 2001: 473). It is in this fleeting togetherness where utopian performatives find their potential to create social change. I mentioned earlier that the structure of the Radical Vulvas is such that a feminist critique is not only discussed, but actualized. I believe that the collective emotionality that occurs at the Radical Vulvas is due to the realization that these forums for feminist discussion and emotion don’t exist enough in the real world. The recognition of this profound lack translates into the desire to recreate and even sustain the utopian space of the Radical Vulvas in external spaces.

Helen Nicholson troubles Dolan’s idea of utopian performance spaces with her assertion that these spaces are not in fact de-contextualized, or taken out of the perspective of social norms and systems, but rather that they are “doubly contextualized.” She claims that, “normal life may be temporarily suspended, but the playfulness of liminality masks, rather than obliterates, other forms of convention and custom.” Thus, it is impossible to sustain the discourse of the performance space as simply “an empty stage” to be filled by the creativity of the performer and imbued with cultural and political meaning, but rather it is a space which carries its own cultural and political context (Nicholson 8). With Nicholson’s critique in mind, I want to trouble my previous thoughts on community and exclusion in the Radical Vulvas. Nicholson alludes to the inability for the theatrical space to efface itself and become, essentially an “empty vessel.” I take from this that it is impossible for us as organizers, who are responsible for creating and framing the performance space, to efface achieve complete neutrality. A performance in which all experiences and opinions would be represented fairly and valued equally is an idealized impossibility. The identities of the organizers – as white, middle-class university students thus become the major determinant of the performance space. This element has an effect on all aspects of the production, and thus effects the ways that utopian moments manifest themselves.

By leaving much of the performance up to chance, utopias are informed not by the conscious framing of the space, but rather who occupies it. Dolan’s theory of utopia in performance is predicated on the potential for performance to build bridges between different subjectivities within the audience. On the contrary, the Radical Vulvas has never seen a particularly diverse audience. This is due to a few reasons. Firstly, all of the organizers are white female university students. Also, the organization does not yet have enough capacity to reach out to (socially and geographically) far flung communities.  Perhaps then, utopian moments in the Radical Vulvas come not from the creation of new, diverse communities within the space of the performance, but rather from the realization of an already existing, somewhat homogenous community. But how could this be? The Radical Vulvas community cannot be drawn up in one word of identification. It is not simply comprised of women, or of feminists. Thus it follows that the performance must do some work with identity and difference. Dolan’s writing on the role of identification in utopian performance suggests that communitas does not simply occur in the recognition of the self in a performative articulation of a similar self, but in the recognition of the self in the other, which creates a fleeting sense of unity in the audience. Radical Vulvas performers have not just spoken about their lives as “women” in general, although that is what the performers callout advertises. People have performed on their experiences as trans, queer, old, or mentally ill people. I have a distinct memory of the day we got an email from an older Montreal playwright performance artist who was interested in participating in the November show. We applauded ourselves for what we saw as the beginnings of a multi-generational feminist community in Montreal. Similarly, we were overjoyed when a Francophone artist approached us at the Back Off! Feminist conference in the spring of 2009. The Radical Vulvas does “build bridges” between experiences, and this has everything to do with the creation of utopian performatives. However, it is apparent that we have only just scratched the surface. In other words, we have yet to address issues of race and class.

The reason for this is our failure to acknowledge specificities afforded to us by our social location. In the little we’ve done to frame the two performances in the name of an inclusive environment, we have used the term “safer space.” The phrase comes from our exposure to and involvement in activist spaces on McGill campus such as the Union For Gender Empowerment, McGill Anti-Racist Coalition, and Queer McGill.  These spaces serve as lounges, libraries, and resource centres. In all of these spaces, the idea of safer space is tied to a commitment to combating racism, heterosexism, transphobia, etc. Volunteer staff members are required to attend anti-oppression training, where they learn strategies to actively combat these systems within the space. Staffers are entrusted with the responsibility to confront any problematic language or actions, and if necessary, can ask individuals to leave the space. In all of these spaces, a piece of paper upon which the Code of Behaviour is printed hangs on the wall near the door.

However, in making connection between these spaces and the Radical Vulvas, we risk ignoring the vast differences between them. These are concrete, immobile spaces, encased by four walls. There are doors with a combination lock, the code to which only collective members and trained staff members have. The Radical Vulvas is contained only in the memories of the organizers, performers, and participants/audience. Its permanence is contingent on the will of the organizers to produce it, and the will of others to attend and participate. It is a mobile space. Each time it is produced, the organizers rent or borrow a bar, loft, warehouse, or commercial performance space. Whereas in spaces like the UGE can fall back on the physical boundaries to enforce a safer space policy, the Radical Vulvas requires a more rigorous enforcement of the laws of the space.

Also, it is important to note that these physical spaces are all armed with knowledge on anti-oppression politics and practice. They approach all of their work with both an academic and practical understanding of hegemony and systemic domination. Their concept of safer space hangs on the ability to uphold those specific values within the space. On the contrary, the Radical Vulvas relies simply on the principle of respect, to often vague ends. In the course of two performances, we have seen the consequences of our failure to clarify what we specifically mean by “safer space.” Part of this is arguably attributed to the fact that people are inclined to conflate the Radical Vulvas safer space with spaces such as the UGE. At the November 2008 Radical Vulvas, a woman performed a monologue about her positive experience meeting a trans woman for the first time. The organizers had previously reviewed the monologue for any hateful material, and approved it performance. Nevertheless, during the discussion her monologue was met with claims that her story was trans-phobic. Various audience members, some of who were trans-identified, leveled their criticism on a violation of the principles of anti-oppression. However, this was not the criteria with which monologue was evaluated. This is the trap we put ourselves in when we purport to offer both a space where “all opinions are valued.” How can we call the safe space when we explicitly authorize opinions that some people find hurtful or offensive?

The other side of this issue sees the space become unsafe for the performer. While I do not wish to delegitimize their concerns, I found that the nature of the criticism in this instance (and others like it) was a personal attack on the performer, rather than a criticism of her ideas, which was disrespectful and destructive to the space as a whole. This phenomenon is difficult and controversial to control, especially when, as feminists, we see anger as a legitimate and oftentimes useful response to a harmful idea. In this instance, we saw the idea of safer space actually move the performance further away from our ideal event – farther away from achieving those kinetic moments of a utopian community.

There have been other instances, particularly during the November performance, where performers have acted in ill will and said malicious things for the sake of being antagonistic. In these moments, the organizers realized that we had not backed up our proclamation of safer space with any recourse for enforcement. We had no protocol for asking these people to stop. We continue to have discussions amongst the organizers about these times when utopia stepped out and chaos took its place. From my perspective, it seems useful to move toward making more rules that govern the space – what can and cannot be said within it, and especially how (and if) we deal with people who “break the rules.” At present, the show’s introduction includes only a brief mention of safer space and respect. However, I understand that making more rules would necessarily mean including a longer introduction wherein the organizers recite the rules and ask the audience and participants to abide by them. I do believe without question that there should be a protocol for asking someone to leave the space. But in considering further regulation of the space, I proceed with caution. I don’t want a drawn out introduction and a laundry list of rules to make people feel policed and patronized. A heavy emphasis on regulation of the space (in terms of on the actions of the people within the space) may prevent the organic, spontaneous moments of community building and utopias performatives. Of course, as I said before, a hurtful comment can also do the work of undoing the harmony of the space. What if these comments go un-criticized, left alone to rot the space from the inside out? Should we then set up a space where all “problematic” comments have to be challenged? Perhaps this would work in a way that if problems don’t “self-correct,” then an organizer must step in and say something.

My thoughts here have lead me to consider if the specific drawbacks of the medium of performance actually make this space wherein everyone feels “safe” and “all experiences are valid” an impossibility. The mere fact of “being there requires a willingness to become temporarily vulnerable in the space. Who shows up is not a mere accident. The idea of a feminist performance, with all of its social, political, and economic implications, interpellates a very specific set of individuals. I wonder then if theatre is in fact an inherently regressive art form, precisely due to its reliance on embodiment. But if I am to adopt that claim, where does that leave me in my role as organizer of a feminist performance?

When I first started writing this article, I expected it would lead me to the hard answers to all of these questions that I’ve been asking since I first got involved with this performance. I had the title already: Radical Vulvas: A series of policy suggestions. Alas, very few policy suggestions actually came to fruition. Hopefully, my failure is proof that these questions are all difficult for a reason.

Dolan, Jill. “Performance, Utopia, and the “Utopian Performative”" Theatre Journal 53.3 (2001): 455-79.

—. “Utopia in Performance.” Theatre Research International 31.2 (2006): 163-73.

Nicholson, Helen. Applied Drama. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005.