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What audience members said about Daughters

'a breath of fresh air' 'an excellent mix of comedy and drama' 'says such a lot in such a short time' 'I didn't want it to end' 'extremely interesting and unusual' 'very well paced' 'stunning performances'   (Please see - It's Only A Bloody Tampon - at the bottom of this page)

What audience members said about The Girl Who Went Out Into the Cold...

'visually striking.' 'strong metaphors and symbolism - beautifully poetic language' 'engaging characters' 'funny with good word play' 'Great lights, shadows, story, puppets and forest characters.' 'We both found [the piece] very affecting' 'very clever' 'the richness of the text was beautiful' 'all of the elements worked well to create the tense, uneasy feel'

Controversy about Daughters

Theatre censorship.. forty years on from the abolition of the very same in 1968...

Why on earth?

Please read on... (this article is also featured on www.thefword.org.uk)

It's Only a Bloody Tampon

Foulisfair Theatre is a three-woman company. We devise original pieces that explore issues from a female perspective. Our current show Daughters is an unsentimental expose of what it can feel like to be a daughter. It presents the idea that girls seek approval from their parents whilst also needing to establish their own identity, which often leads them to acts of rebellion. The result of these acts is often guilt and shame, with the daughter feeling that she has gone "too far".

This week, Foulisfair has been accused of doing exactly that. In a packed auditorium in Dewsbury on Sunday night, our performance was suddenly interrupted by a grey-haired man standing up and shouting: "Absolute filth! You should be ashamed! You want locking up!" Perhaps he was so carried away with the subject matter that he felt the need to enact the role of a reactionary father? That is debatable. Whatever his motivation, his tirade directly preceded an abrupt and forthright exit: perhaps not executed with panache, but certainly with rather a loud bang.

What, you might well ask, had we done on stage to provoke such a reaction? Had we depicted child nudity or gang rape, simulated sexual acts or thrown syringes into the auditorium? No. The heinous crime we had committed was to pull a bloody tampon - a wad of bleached cotton on a string, soaked in stage blood - out of a laundry basket: an everyday object (admittedly not a snotty handkerchief or used condom) covered with implied, but obviously female, bodily fluid.

The actors were shocked by the outburst, but they took a deep breath and continued the show. Only in retrospect did the full gravity of the situation hit us: in a supposedly liberal country in 2008, menstruation can still be a huge taboo. We were being told in no uncertain terms that it should be kept hidden, secret, and definitely out of the public eye. In this day and age any physical evidence of menstrual blood still conjures up thoughts of shame and "filth".

Whilst one audience member left, another ninety-eight remained. The performers received genuine, warm applause at the end and were praised as they left the building. Should we feel compassion towards an elderly man who is so out of touch with the times? In effect, did we not expose his unreasonable attitudes and behaviour?

The controversy, however, does not stop there. Daughters is one of five short plays by women touring West Yorkshire together. After the Dewsbury performance, the producer (a woman) gave us an ultimatum: either take out the offending article or relinquish our involvement in the tour. Whilst other plays feature graphic dialogue about abortion and enactments of stabbing, our minimal women's health product is deemed too risky to ensure the tour's commercial viability. It really is this simple: no bloody tampon or no show.

It hasn't been an easy decision to make. It is one that we have thought and talked about for days, for hours at a time; one that has threatened to divide us from each other and from ourselves. Throughout the debate I became increasingly aware of the political and cultural importance of the piece we have created. We have worked hard on all aspects of this show, and would be passing up the opportunity to perform at five further venues if we refused to compromise. I am not proud to say that we have bowed to pressure this time - we have hung our heads as good daughters should for the sake of "bums on seats" - but where the future of Daughters is concerned, the censorship debate is far from over. One thing we now know for certain is that we will never allow Foulisfair's artistic integrity to be compromised in this way again.

Gemma Bolwell & Harriet Chandler 18/9/2008

Gloucestershire Echo reviews Double Bill at the Everyman 29 January 09

For critics confronted with experimental and symbolic theatre the safe way out is waffle and the use of phrases like interesting and challenging. These two short plays are indeed interesting and challenging, but other adjectives spring to mind like brave and insightful. Neither pretend to be neatly parceled slices of life, but they hint at truths about relationships we all feel, but which defy description. Foulisfair Theatre consists of three young actors who studied at Leeds, and share a fascination with the place of women in society. Gemma Bolwell in Canvas appeared to be an usherette, until she asked the audience to look into her eyes and describe her life. The rest was silence, as lying on a white canvas she movingly searched her life to define her female identity, with incident in mime and movement - much of it agitated. Daughters began with Harriet Chandler and Emma Hornby joined by an umbilical cord. They examined mother-daughter dependence and rejection for good and ill, through crass and humorous teenage embarrassments to the role reversal that comes with aging. Throughout Foulisfair Theatre featured a very high and involving level of invention and use of props, and it looks set for a bright future. Derek Briggs

Foulisfair Theatre gave us Inside Out, the beginnings of a piece about living in a bubble. This is a one woman show and it involved a plastic greenhouse. The best bit was the destruction/transformation of the greenhouse. The work is at an early stage and I think that there are some interesting possibilities, and certainly the premise of the show is far reaching and apt.