Next week as part of the Magdalena project celebrations ‘Magdalena@25’ I will be revisiting a show I made with Volcano  almost ten years ago – ‘This Imaginary Woman’. The subject of the show is my mother- about her bringing up 5 kids on her own, her illness with Multiple Sclerosis, her death in 1996 – she is this imaginary woman. The show was created as a ‘song cycle’ in the vein of a Berlinesque ‘Kurt Weil’ type cabaret with influences from the likes of Patti Smith and Polly Harvey. It is a show created with Patrick Fitzgerald brilliant composer, musician and lead singer with the cult indie band of the 90’s ‘Kitchen’s of Distinction’.

We made and toured the show in the UK and abroad when I was coming up to my 40^th birthday – now seven years later we’ve been asked to perform it at again at the Magdalena celebrations in Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff on Saturday 19^th August. First of all I thought it would be impossible to re-produce the show (especially as we had no time or budget for re-rehearsal) but became interested in seeing if we could perform the show in a different type of context – to strip the theatricality and artifice from the show and put on one which was more intimate and less ‘staged’. This version will be ‘unplugged’ with a simpler and perhaps more raw delivery. We are also using it as an opportunity to reveal the process of making and performing such a personal piece of work about illness, death and grief. This is an experiment for us in that we will present the songs and use the spaces in-between to reflect,  share and to listen to what arises in the moment…’

We had a lot of strong reactions from people first time round. Some were upset or embarrassed by such a public revealing of a personal story. Some thought the theatre was not the place for this kind of show – also was it music or theatre? Others, (many who had gone through the same thing) those who had loved and lost someone close found the show very hard, almost impossible to watch but told us that it became an important part of their own grieving and that they had come through something powerful in the watching and witnessing of it.

I am interested in theatre as a space where we can express the deepest or most difficult parts of ourselves and our kind. This is often the dirty laundry we don’t think we should wash in public. Making the show we were really aware that we wanted to create something that allowed for a journey through the grief process (people like Elizabeth Kübler Ross have made it their life’s work to document the stages of grief). We didn’t want to just take them to a dark or difficult place and leave them there. In the making of the show both myself and Patrick spoke a lot about ‘permission’ – are we allowed to do something like this and is it safe? As I said the over-riding reaction to the show was one almost of gratitude from people who had gone through a bereavement themselves. The show seemed to take away a taboo and sense of separation and isolation that we feel when we’ve lost someone close and can’t connect with the rest of the world.

So, revisiting the show is an experiment. We want to unpick it and also to talk about the themes in a conversational, unplanned way. I am interested in seeing if there is life in This Imaginary Woman in future. Perhaps to create a workshop or a session which explores our public and personal reactions to grief – at a personal, societal or planetary level. Patrick is a GP as well as musician. He has also worked as a medical practitioner in hospices and in ‘end of life care’ services. The show might be best taken out of the theatre and put into a different setting – health and social care. We shall see, but for now we’re rehearsing for Cardiff and maybe for a show at our new space at 229 High Street in Swansea in the Autumn.

Find out more...

http://www.themagdalenaproject.org/archive/25celebration/programme.htm

www.volcanotheatre.co.uk

Fern Smith is a co-founder of Volcano and creative producer of Volcano Theatre and has for the last twenty years been involved, as a performer or director, in all the company’s shows.

Patrick Fitzgerald, formerly lead singer and songwriter with the acclaimed band Kitchens of Distinction, has pursued a solo career under the alias of Stephen Hero and now as Patrick Fitzgerald. He is a medical doctor and practising GP in the NHS in Manchester.