Cheap Thrills
This performing posse of movers and shakers from Bristol are getting ready to titillate and tease our coastal tinsel town this year. The four smart and sassy solo performances are intimate and entertaining explorations of dramatic representations of women.
Melody Mason is performing a delicate and controlled spectacle with the theme of women and windows. Doran George moves the stage to the street and explores the life of a drag queen illuminated by car headlights and torches held by the audience. Pat West, who organises the poetry tent at Glastonbury will do her bit for the absent women of Ibsen's Huddagarba. She brings to life the ladies who are mentioned but never seen.

I caught up with one of the Bristolian thespians, Sophia New whose performance explores teenage angst and anger. Sophia tries to deal with her childhood problems whilst working with and against feminist theatre theories. She has three separate characters she uses for different scenes;

Linda from the film "Wish You Were Here", Polly from the Threepenny Opera by Brecht and herself as a sixteen year old. Linda from "Wish you were here" was based on Cythnia Paine, a curious and provocative teenager growing up in post-war Britain. Sophia says the confident and feisty character of Linda helped her deal with her own teenage problems. "As a child I rebelled against my mother through Linda. "Up yer bum!", I would say and if she had a go at me about being rude, I'd shout at her: "But it wasn't really me who said it, Mum -it was Linda!"

Stories of sexual awakenings, stroppy sisters and South London will be heard when Sophia reads from the diary she kept as a 16 year-old. She has not written her script around a specific diary entry. "I'll just open a page on the night and read it out", she says. She's still not sure if she will cover up the names mentioned: "I may end up outing an Uncle," Sophia says, "Oh well, he doesn't live in Brighton!

Sophia will also try to do a tap dance. She says: "I want to be like a pathetic seaside entertainer in a glitzy dance hall. Someone who is not particularly good but who people would tolerate because they're on holiday. They may even feel sorry for the dancer because they are so bad!"

Fingers crossed there will be no pitiful glances or pathetic praise from the Brighton audience this festival. May they rock the house!

At the Ray Tindle Centre, 40-42 Upper Gardner Street, North Laine, 01273 692151. 20th, 21st May. 8pm £5/£3.50

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Review:

Feminist performance is not all women talking about their womb energy and how the patriachy can be smashed is we all worship Virginia Wolfe.
Admittedly, there was a bit of that sort of vibe in the pub afterwards, but the actual performance was funny and entertaining. Sophia New shone out in her comic-tragedy of teenage life. The diary extract she read, she told us how she and her freind saw Robert Smith in Oxford Street. Crying into the mike like a pissed up cabaret star she asked the audience do our mothers make us cry.

It moved me, but as I begun to ponder about my mother, I was brought abruptly down to earth as Sophia screamed "Up yer bum!". She danced hysterically around the room, shouting, singing, screaming, "Up yer bum! " It was fab.

As she ran onto the stage to leave us, she turned round, lifted up her skirt and showed us her bum.

Bottoms up, Sophia!! if we all loved out mothers. It moved me.

Ayshea Buksh