Societal stereotypes about red-haired women will be confronted head-on in new unconventional cabaret #KickAssREDS .
The show opens at the Rhino Room later this month, and here Adelaide writer-director Michèle Saint-Ives tells Heather Taylor Johnson what audiences can expect – including a nod to former prime minister Julia Gillard.
So what’s #KickAssREDS about?
#KickAssREDS is a hilarious and poignant unconventional cabaret that takes its audience on a journey through the history of women blessed with red hair.
It weaves together the three threads that make up the story of the red-haired woman – the cultural myths, the science and personal history.
It is what I call a ‘play-baret’ forged from the reality of what we have dealt with as red-headed women, and is presented by three varieties of red-haired women.
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It is about living as a rare woman who speaks to the universality of our human condition. It is a work I wrote in response to the particularity of our time – when Julia Gillard was our prime minster – and has become one that reads us as a lightning rod for the human race.
It’s such a blunt title, I’m thinking the tone of it might be punchy. Is it? Punchy?
Haha. I’d say frank at times. Risqué at times. Maybe moments of provocation. But there is no dominant tone. It’s multi-tonal, as fits a play-meets-cabaret
Do you feel that the generalisation of red-headed women being feisty defines you, for better or worse?
Our experience is that people’s projections on our nature or character is generally around temper – fiery! – and passion – quickening! I guess if you unpacked ‘feisty’, those would be encapsulated.
They are a few of the generalisations that we address directly in the performance in terms of how we as red-headed women have chosen to respond to society’s definitions of us.
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Julia Gillard is one of the women you focus on in your play. Do you think she ran the country with red-headed passion?
She exemplifies the case where an individual can become a lightning rod for a society generally (in her case, the treatment of women) – my play responds directly to that premise, but takes it beyond her being not only a ‘woman’ but the added consequences of being a woman with red hair that evoked such a shocking reactionary treatment of her as our prime minister. But to directly answer your question, I think she ran the country as would any person with a clarity of purpose to being in power and a passionate vision, which in her case was (and is) education.
The show also gives time to Lilith, one of my favourite characters, from Hebrew mythology. How did you come to know about this character and that she had red hair, and what is it that attracts you to her?
I came to know about Lilith through studying art and poetry of the Romantic period. I then rediscovered her through feminist theory and narratives where they reinterpreted her accounts in sacred and biblical texts. I was struck by the dominance of her as an archetype in the construction by patriarchy of not only red-head stereotypes but of women generally, in terms of acceptability, through the ages to now.
If anything’s going to go wrong on opening night, what’s it going to be?
More likely who’s it going to be! And that is me. I have the honour of sharing the stage with two professionally trained actors and musicians (Maryann Boettcher and Izzy Jane) – which I am not. Also, I wouldn’t be able to perform without their unequivocal support of me, as I have an acquired brain injury which has a few symptoms that can come out of nowhere.
So if anything’s going to go wrong on opening night it could be me having a vertigo attack or losing my ability to speak! But of course we have plan Bs (and Cs, and Ds…). The show will go on. But how’s that for a dash of suspense to come and see the show.
#KickAssREDS will be presented at the Rhino Room from September 19-29. Details can be found here.