Skip to main content

Pretty Ugly @ LPAC by Lauren Orwin | 29 October 2015

Imagine a stage where the performer is so intimately exposed to us. She lies on the stage (very Abramovic) surrounded by the costumes which will make up her show. The performer is Louise Orwin and she is about to take us on a journey.

Teenage girls around the world post videos of themselves online, asking viewers if they think they are pretty or ugly. Orwin took this idea and decided to see what would happen if she played the roles of three teenage girls online for a year. Most of the comments were negative, a majority of them from men. However, this show is not just about exposing misogyny or, indeed, paedophilia (she was posing as underage girl, and most of the genuine posters online are under the age of consent). Pretty Ugly is also about girls – about being a girl. About how we question, doubt, and construct ourselves. Imagine Moran’s How To Build a Girl on stage, with some shocking scenes.

Orwin introduces not only to the characters of Baby, Becky and Amanda, but also three of the men which contacted her. The stories she tells us are shocking, powerful and really eye-opening. Not to mention disturbing. I will say that there is a bit of a trigger warning for suicide mentions, sexual content, and grooming.

After the show I tweeted to Louise that she’d broken my heart, blown my mind and made me feel awesome all at the same time – and it’s true. Orwin’s show is ridiculously powerful, extremely moving and beautifully empowering.

Find more about Louise’s show here.

Find out more about LPAC here.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Teens don't read"

Earlier today Maureen Johnson pointed out that the view of "teens don't read" in the UK is deeply entrenched (which is a word that I now love  and had never heard before). As a teenager in the UK, the stigma around reading seems to be - to me - it's "uncool", it's "geeky", there "aren't any good books out there". I think the fact that a lot of teenagers in British schools are exposed to older literature or, perhaps, not that popular literature in lessons and forced into over-analysing and spending countless hours on 'what the author meant'. A point that was raised in this twitter discussion was that people didn't want to be seen reading, or didn't want to be seen reading certain books. It's made me realise that I never   ever ever  see people reading in the older years in my school ( ever ). Perhaps the odd year 7 (12 year old) or year 8 (13 year old) will read, but - from experience - they will probably be ...
4 comments
Read more

The concept of 'okayness'

Something I've noticed through both personal experience and observing other individuals is how human beings deal with the concept of being 'okay'. Generally we all have good things and bad things going on in their lives, take me for example: bad - back pain, medicine; good - family, friends, home, life, food, money... good stuff happening and change (change is an 'okay' right now rather than a 'not okay'). I happen to think that my life is  okay at the moment because, for me, the good stuff out ways the bad stuff by a milestone. Throughout a day I may become not okay but on the whole I am - on the whole I'm happy. I have noticed though, through reflection and looking at others, that we almost have this desire... this tendency to want to point at the 'not okay' bits of out lives and make them of a higher importance than our 'okay' bits. If I'm having an average day it can much more easily become a bad day than a good because I reme...
2 comments
Read more

Girls on YouTube

You know something that is really  annoying me lately: slimey YouTube comments. I posted a video, admittedly yes because I knew it would get attention because I'm a girl talking about Skyrim, wearing a vest top because that happened to be what I was wearing at the time and I've had really... objectifying comments. It's not even as if some of these comments are commenting on my looks, they're commenting on my body. I don't even care if guys think when they see a girl in a low-cut top "ooh, boobs!" but they don't (usually) voice this in person, so why should they be allowed to do it on the internet? It annoys me greatly; imagine if I was two years younger and had done the same thing? It would put me in a very vulnerable situation, and it still does in a way. I want people to view my content because they like what comes out of my mouth, not because I'm female and film in casual clothing. I've even had someone accuse me of angling my camera so ...
2 comments
Read more