What reasons might there be for a perfectly sane and strong woman to take her children’s lives? That’s the question, that grew out of studying Medea, that sparked Fall Prettier, the glittery, tuneful new production from Wet Paint. Co-creator Therese Ramstedt explains it all below. Have a read, then book your tickets
The production runs at The Space from 25 to 30 June 2019.
It’s about Medea, the woman who killed her children. That says it all, doesn’t it? Perhaps not. Fall Prettier deconstructs and twists archetypal narratives about women, sexuality and race. Expect glitter, movement, catchy a cappella tunes, bouncing exercise balls, pregnant barbie dolls and ketchup. And, bubbling under the surface, the resilience and power of women in solidarity standing up against their prescribed story lines.
Fall Prettier is the first collaboration between Afro-German performer and theatre maker Zandile Darko and Swedish Therese Ramstedt, who have come together to form the company Wet Paint. Early versions of the work were performed at Arcola Theatre as part of new writing showcase PEN and at the 2018 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Wet Paint aims to make work which is approachable yet daring, tackling urgent yet hard-to-talk-about topics with humour, boldness and vividly poetic fusion of movement and song with new writing responding to ‘known’ stories.
Therese Ramstedt
Ramstedt (writer, co-director, composer, lyricist) and Darko (co-director, movement) also star in the production, alongside Laura Schuller, Helga Ragnars and Knut Olav Rygnestad.
As part of the run of Fall Prettier, Ramstedt and Darko are staging a free workshop on 22 June to explore movement and voice as an ensemble. No previous experience is needed for the event, which will use playful movement exercises to explore the possibilities of working in a group and moving as an ensemble.
During the summer of 2019, it host productions including immersive experience Lovers Anonymous, new musical Parenthood, and clowning festival, Send in the Clowns.
Therese Ramstedt on Fall Prettier
How did you come up with the idea for Fall Prettier?
In all honesty, this one started with a jingle! I often make up a lot of little snippets of songs which I tend to record on my phone and then forget about (I genuinely plan to do something with them at some point though!) The Medea jingle was just something I improvised as a joke in a room with Zandile, but then it stuck (it is a bit of an ear worm, so our audiences might get stuck with it too…) And I pictured it with Zandile’s movement, and the juxtaposition of her poetic and powerful body language with the really crude and glitzy jingle about “Medea, killer of babies”.
Why did Medea appeal?
Zandile and I had been having a lot of conversations about Medea as our graduation piece for the Rose Bruford MA/Actor Performer Training was also rooted in that particular myth. And I think we were both really bored by how in almost every retelling of Medea’s story the explanation for why she killed her children is that she is desperately in love with Jason and jealousy drove her mad, or that she is mentally ill. So we started asking: what reasons might there be for a perfectly sane and strong woman to take her children’s lives? And what if it the things that bring her to make such a decision was because of the social structure in the world she inhabited, rather than an internal murderous drive?
We started looking for other possible narratives, and were inspired for example by Christa Wolf‘s novel Medea and also Mary Beard‘s Women and Power. Christa Wolf uses the first person and also gives space and voice to Glauce – the “other woman” Jason left Medea for. So we started to think about how women are so often pitted against each other as rivals; and in the script I started experimenting with the idea that perhaps Medea and Glauce were complicit and perhaps even friends. Mary Beard, on her hand, dissects the systematic silencing of women in the public space over the last millennia, and links it to the classics. And so this piece ended up being very much an exploration of the continuous appropriation of women and their stories – often told by everyone else but the women themselves.
What have you brought to that story?
The story that we are now telling in the piece is not necessarily exclusively about Medea, but about many women – including ourselves. It is constant conversations about our own roles in contributing to the status quo, and the continuous realisations that just because we may feel morally opposed to certain social structures that doesn’t mean we are not complicit with them.
On a practical level, we have also brought in parallels to the 21st century and the prejudices and structures that still exist – some of these references are quite subtle and others… not quite so subtle!
Fall Prettier production images
You’re also staging a free workshop as part of the run. Why did you want to do that and what can participants expect?
Basically, we are very inspired when we work in the space together combining our singing and movement! And I personally have found so much inspiration in my own creative career from participating in workshops in conjunction with seeing shows by the people leading them – so it has been a bit of a dream to do this kind of thing. It is also a wonderful way to properly get to engage with and meet our potential future audience and collaborators, and a way to do something that might be appealing to the great community that The Space has. Participants can expect a fast-paced, playful, sweaty and musical session! And hopefully it will make them either want to come to the show, or know for absolute certain to run far far away..!
How did you meet Zandile and what moved you to create Wet Paint?
We met when doing our MAs at Rose Bruford, and enjoyed working together from the get go. It was a mutual feeling of inspiration for each others’ processes; Zandile’s roots in movement and mine in song. And while we share a lot of ambitions for what live performance making can be (and what we want it to be!) we are also really different as people and artists so are able to challenge each other and go further into places where we might not have ventured without one another. One might say that we complete each other…
What’s next for Wet Paint?
We are hoping there may be a future life for Fall Prettier, but of course that depends on boring outer forces such as funding (which I suppose is only boring when you don’t have it!) Otherwise, we have a dream to stage Sarah Ruhl‘s The Vibrator Play because it is just brilliant. Regardless, we will keep on working.
How do you feel about staging the production at The Space?
The Space is such an amazing and supportive venue, and I have been lucky to perform there before (I have a solo play called Mission Abort, which has been around a bit). You’re always in good company as far as the programme is concerned, and their dedication to emerging artists is hard to match. It is also a really brilliant space which immediately adds character to a show even if it is very versatile!
What can audiences expect from a trip to see Fall Prettier?
Hopefully an experience that stays with them beyond the 70 minutes the show lasts. But they can also expect a rollercoaster of a show, which we think will be funny in a horrible way and horrible in a funny way. They can definitely expect to be entertained, but also (again, hopefully!) to have questions raised rather than answers provided. And, you know, there is also glitter, pregnant barbie dolls, bouncing exercise balls and quite a bit of ketchup. As one might expect from any re-imagining of Medea, right?!
