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 people I have met through ink

I read somewhere once that one of the reasons books are so great is that one can pick them up a second time and feel how you did, or remember where you were the first time you picked it up and opened it. I stand by this idea as to one of the reasons I love reading so much. I am perusing the wonderful words of Ali Smith's The Accidental for my level 1 module 'Introduction to Narrative' and whilst this module is all very technical (and trust me, I do love that!) I am really enjoying reading a novel where the characterisation leaves a bitter sweet taste in my mouth and when I close my eyes all I can see is Amber; how she looks, how she dresses, how she smells... I love that. I love that I can read 200 pages or so of one novel and suddenly there is this person inside of my head and I can't get her out. Not so long ago I read R. J. Anderson's Nomad (the second in the Swift series) and I was brought back to why I adore fantasy so much. I felt like I wanted to fly, and...
Post a Comment
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