Wizard Presents ‘Perfectly Imperfect Women’
‘It’s a great title’ I’m told over and again about our latest show ‘Perfectly Imperfect Women’, which is currently playing at Pleasance Courtyard for the Edinburgh Fringe 2017. Women stop in their tracks to take a flyer when they’ve refused others. But this is only the women… I’ve been intrigued and amused to see how, having the word ‘women’ in the title affects both how I sell it, to whom and who seems interested to see it.
When I approach mixed gender couples or groups I see the women stepping forward and the men retreating and disengaging from the conversation, or the woman saying ‘I’m with my husband’… I find myself justifying the show ‘It’s about women because I’m a woman and it’s my story – but it’s also universal and archetypal’… Some of the men who’ve enjoyed the show have helpfully suggested that I drop ‘women’ from the title as they say, ‘it’s our story too’. One man asked me when I would be telling his story and other asked why there weren’t any men featured.
‘This is for my wife, she’ll love it’ says one man, as I offer a flyer. Another jokes ‘I already have one of those, a perfectly imperfect women’ and points possessively towards the woman standing next to him.
I suspect that I’m as circumspect in encouraging men to see the show as they are to hear about it. I’ve been successfully programmed it seems, into believing that if it’s about women then it’s not likely to be of interest to the majority of men. My inner dialogue shocks me and I’m striving to shift my approach and in-built reactions. But still it pleases me enormously when a man comes up at the end of the performance to say that he enjoyed it. I quote one encounter when a young guy in his 20’s who had tears in his eyes as he said ‘I loved it…. I’m going home to call my mum now’.
I’m asked by journalists ‘is this a feminist piece’. It hasn’t occurred to me until the first time I’m asked. I believe that women and men should have equal rights, I’m happy that we’re not necessarily the same but believe that we are equal, and should be honoured and accepted in equal measure. I’m proud and delighted to be a woman but I didn’t set out to write a feminist show, I wrote a show with my biography at its centre which I hoped would speak to others.
This question which comes up time and time again in interviews makes me think about why when a women stands up to share stories about women they are labelled ‘feminist’ but when men write about men, they are just stories….
The same is true of books. When I was a child how many parents encouraged their sons to read ‘Pippi Longstocking’; Heidi, Anne of Green Gables; Mrs Pepperpot? Yet I read ‘Just William’; ’Robin Hood’; ‘Huckleberry Finn’; ‘Treasure Island’; ‘Lord of the Flies’ without question. Harry Potter isn’t considered a ‘boys’ book, but if JK Rowling had placed Hermoine as the lead protagonist and it had been a school of Witches not Wizards would it have reached the same monumental place in our hearts? It wouldn’t, would it.
When I was 22 years old, almost straight out of drama college (80% female) and from an all girls boarding school, I was shocked during an interview for a theatre manager position in one of the largest West End Theatre Groups when the General Manager said to me ‘If it doesn’t work with you we won’t be having any more female managers’.
As women we have long seen the world through the male lens – HIS-tory. It makes me remember that my great-grandmother, one of the five generations of women in PIW never had a vote and my grandmother, the second of the five generations, didn’t get it until after she was 30….. However it also makes me consider how men are loosing out not being able to look down the lens of HER-tory, they are the ones who will ultimately miss so much, it is a real restriction for them…
Whilst I’m reticent to suggest that men will like my show and feel responsible if they don’t, it doesn’t stop the guys thrusting flyers filled with male images and titles my way as I walk with a gang of four women, including my 15 year old daughter, to Pleasance Courtyard: ‘Testosterone’, ‘Ballistic’, ‘Men with Coconuts’, The Believers are but Brothers’….
When a burning question arises in me and I don’t try to answer the question too quickly, try to fix it or put it in a box I believe that it’s an opportunity for deep change. If I actively live with the question it allows me to really explore, consider and expand my perspective.
So I’m currently living with these and other questions surrounding my show:
Is it a feminist piece and if so why?
What stops me from handing out flyers to groups of men or even to mixed groups of men and women?
Is it for men and women equally? Does it need to be?
I’m not rushing to answer these questions but I know that they (and others) are working secretly and quietly to transform me – that way I can be the change I want to see in the world.
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Danyah Miller is performing at Pleasance Courtyard V33 12.45pm
Wizard Presents Perfectly Imperfect Women
created, in association with OvalHouse, in celebration of International Women’s Day March 2017 www.perfectlyimperfectwomen.co.uk
TRAILER:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxv5huabZPY
@DanyahMillerStoryteller | @danyahmiller
PRESS INFORMATION : For interviews, images and further press information please contact Kim Morgan PR on 07939 591 403 or email kim@kimmorgan-pr.com