Tattooing - The Smoke and O at The Chelsea Theatre

These productions are a result of Chelsea Theatre’s Early Careers Artist Scheme, which aims to support artists at the beginning of their careers with mentoring from Chelsea Theatre’s Associate Artist Stacey Makishi. Sian Ní Mhuirí is not every parents dream child. She creates experimental live art and theatre, frequently dresses in drag, stays out late and comes home drunk, and has founded a political movement/football club called ‘Faggots for Ukraine!’. Vicki Sutherland is a little more normal, but has caused a few raised eyebrows in her time by quitting her dental practice to pursue her dream career as a ceramicist and sculptor. Collaborating together for the first time, they have made a strange commitment to the past and future of their art. This interdisciplinary performance work is one in a series of tattoo rituals created by Ní Mhuirí. This time, however, Sian is keeping it in the family – the artist tattooing her, Vicki Sutherland, is her mother. In development since Autumn 2011, ‘O’ is a work that stands against reductive notions of the female body in performance. Through a tightly-woven improvisational score, ‘O’ proposes constant states of renewal to assert and express a multitude of subjective positions regarding gender, race and being in general. O’ intends to share our experiences – as British women, as makers, as dancers – and propose the questions, dilemmas and assumptions we come across; sometimes scandalous, sometimes joyous, sometimes confused, sometimes outraged, sometimes simply hurt. Through its unfolding, we enjoy shifting and posing questions through the re-contextualisation of the black female body and its provocations, as well as negotiate the delicate consequences of trying to make such a work. We take pleasure in inventing, re-inventing and denying ourselves; finding different ways of just being.