Ladder Karma

Surely not yet karma...if it was I would've found a new one on the way home. Today we started the arts project at the Barnton Hotel, sadly I had to leave after only an hour or so and spent the next several hours next to the toilet with severe sickness and diarrhea. Then just to perfectly round of an utterly shite day it looks as if someone has walked off with a very good quality aluminium ladder which I will now have to replace - oh the joy of volunteering and trying to make the world a better place!!! I am now going to escape into film land and try to re-find my happy face!

Best ever article?

The Royal Mile and the wonderful Dance Base

What courage!!!

August the 7th (which also happens to be my lovely sisters 30th birthday) was definitely a truly exhilarating experience! The gorgeous young women who are supporting me in publicising Deserving? were so brave yesterday and proved themselves to be not only incredibly strong but enormously deep too.

Yesterday we did our first day of full blown dancing etc on the Royal Mile and one of my friends who is supporting me with the publicity broke down in tears, then when we got back to dansebase (who are kindly allowing us to use their facilities to change etc) the other one broke down too and all three of us sat in the shower together - shower wasn't on and we were still in our costumes - and sobbed our hearts out!

It sounds like punishment but I am positive that it is in fact cathartic, especially because we all feel so empowered by taking this subject on and doing everything we can to highlight the issues surrounding it. We felt utter exhilaration during most of the street show and complete satisfaction and release after our tears!

Photos to follow!

Some amazing words of other people's wisdom!

http://edinburgheye.wordpress.com/2012/07/08/rape-is-not-unspeakable/
Fabulous Edinburgh slut walks and an even better explanation!

The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women.

It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized

sensation. For this reason, we have often turned away from the exploration and

consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with

its opposite, the pornographic. But pornographic is a direct denial of the power of the

erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasises sensation 

                       without feeling.          Audre Lorde. Uses of the Erotic

It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked...You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

Khalil Gibran

                

The Edinburgh leg begins - oh how I've missed this beautiful city!!!

Edinburgh

I'm emotionally and physically whacked, I feel like I have been punched several times in the face, wrists and hips. I spend my days creating theatre about rape and have created a monster in wanting to use a universal language to discuss this subject!

I was raped when I was 15 ok, ok, so a lot of people have been raped and it's horrible and humiliating but why do I feel this overwhelming need to shout about it? Obviously not having spoken about it for several years afterwards plays a part but what I really believe has driven me to do this are the views of many people in our society. Some of these views make me so angry I feel like I am going to explode and they come out of no-where like when I'm reading a newspaper or discussing recent occurrences with friends, one minute I'm having a nice day and then next minute I'm back there with my butt in the air. I want to exorcise this anger and I want anyone else who has lived in shame since being raped to do so too.

Being raped is bad enough but being made to feel responsible for it too is possibly yet more damaging; we carry guilt for hurting ourselves. We are led to believe two things as women; one that we should make ourselves look beautiful and sexy but two that if we do so we are likely to be sending a message that we want to have sex at any time and with anyone. The latter, I’m afraid is just not true I want to have sex but I want to choose when and who with. Either we should be educating our children to cover up completely and protect themselves from the monsters in our community or we should revel in our beauty, shout from the roof tops that sex is wonderful and work harder to create better people who don’t steal other peoples’ sexual integrity. The theatre, for me, is the only place we are likely to change this and what better place than the Edinburgh Fringe Festival?!