Women Who Run With The Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype

Here are a couple of my favourite helpful excerpts from this book:

"The history of wolves is like the history of women, regarding both their spiritedness and their travails."  

"Healthy wolves and healthy women share certain psychic characteristics: keen sensing, playful spirit, and a heightened capacity for devotion.  Wolves and women are relational be nature, inquiring, possessed of great endurance and strength.  They are deeply intuitive, intensely concerned with their young, their mate and their pack.  They are experienced in adapting to constantly changing circumstances, they are fiercely stalwart and very brave.  Yet both have been hounded, harassed, and falsely imputed to be devouring and devious, overly aggressive, of less value than those who are their detractors.  They have been targets of those who would clean up the wilds as well as the wildish environs of the psyche, extincting the instinctual, and leaving no trace of it behind.  The predation of wolves and women by those who misunderstand them is strikingly similar."  

"This wilderwoman is the prototypical woman...no matter what culture, no matter what era, no matter what politic, she does not change.  Her cycles change, her symbolic representations change, but in essence, she does not change.  She is what she is and she is whole."  

Pinkola Estes C (1992) Women Who Run With The Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wold Woman Archetype. Ballantine Books. New York

Book reviews:

Walters M (2005) Feminism A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. Oxford.
Maitland S, Wandor M (1987) Arky Types. Methuen. London


Feminism: A Very Short History by Margaret Walters.

This book by Margaret Walters is excellent as a short but thorough survey of feminism through history from its' religious roots right through to what she called the second-wave feminism in the late 20th century via the key moments in history such as the work of the Christian mystics of the middle ages, the Quakers and Christian social action, suffrage etc. She tackles the most significant issues in an uncluttered clearly presented way.

Her way into the work was via a survey of young people in their mid twenties who saw feminism as irrelevant because of its academic rather than practical interest, or else the attraction it has for extremists. Her arguments however are so persuasive and so honest that by the end of this short book one can only feel a sense of pride in our feminist ancestry through whom we gained education, employment. medical care, and the vote etc.

Feminism world-wide is a fascinating area of study- what women want in different countries or
what their battles are compared with western women is stark. Brazilian women reject the term feminism as eurocentric and too gender obsessed when there are more pressing local problems such as "racial violence and employment issues related to colour." Other women worldwide refer to "post-colonial feminism" which relates the ignorance of Westerners of women's lives "complicated by deep-rooted local beliefs by practices arising out of class differences, caste, religion, ethnic origins, and also by the legacy of colonialism."

At this point one hangs one's head at the shameful selfishness of the so-called developed world.


Arky Types by Sara Maitland and Michelene Wandor

If any of you as puppeteers are thinking of depicting animals, then this is the book. It is essentially two feminists writers sending letters to each other about a book collaboration, in between (I have to say I did skip pages to get on with the story) there is a delightfully anarchic exchange of letters going on between Mrs Noah, the animals she is planning to put into the Ark, and the local Mrs Vicar. It is easy to spot feminist, queer and post-colonial discourse! and, of course tongue in cheek exploration of archetypes- or do they mean stereotypes? But that would not work with Noah.

Mrs Noah is building the Ark because Noah is a man and will never finish it and her teenage sons are lying in around smoking cactus leaves. Two feminist tortoises have run off refusing to get on board, accusing Mrs Noah and the human race in general of 'isms': "Of course we're in the garden and we're not coming back, no way. We've had to climb about three thousand sodding stairs (stairs are a clear example of the sort of speciesism we're complaining about) to get onto the typewriter to answer you......................................so we're not coming back .Look it's hardly worth it; all we got out of the entire Old and New Testaments was one sodding reference, and you know what to? We bet you don't, no-one bothers with tortoise cuitural history. One reference and that to say we're unclean- fucking dirtism, the Bible is full of it. ..................Let it sodding rain we say; we repudiate pro-sun anti-wet weatherism. ...".etc

Germaine Greer (1970) x19x17 The Female Eunuch

The Female Eunuch has been reprinted 36 times or thereabouts since 1970-
Quoting Elizabeth Wurtzel in her essay The New C Word , on The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer, " I've always had this positively sexy view of the movement. For me feminism is about feeling great, looking good, getting the run of one's own life, having your needs and wants and wishes fulfilled." In contrast also writing today, in her book "Feminism a Very Short Introduction" Margaret Walters surveys women in their early twenties, some university educated, others working and when asked "whether they considered themselves feminists or indeed had any interest in feminism most of them replied, flatly no. That it belonged to academia, to fundamentalists and was in short no longer relevant to their generation"

Reading the Female Eunuch for the first time now, in 2008, I was struck first of all by the energy and passion of Germaine Greer, then I felt some of her ideas had dated. Then I realised shamefully that I was a beneficiary of the battles of feminists to give me some of the freedoms Germaine Greer was desperate for me to have. I had NEVER felt that I only existed to be the wife of someone or the daughter of someone else. I had only ever thought I was a person in my own right. I also realised that the work I produced so freely was chock full of imagery which could not have been meaningful fifty years earlier and has meaning now for audiences because of the forty odd years of change wraught on by behalf. My own work has been called 'brave'. ...and it is a slight compliment when compared with women who have struggles for such basic rights as education for women, and which we see lacking in some countries today.

Germaine Greer MUST be read for anyone to understand the journey women have taken for us to be so much freer today. Of especial interest to artists are the early chapters where the author attempts to debunk specialists who try to make an undue emphasis on the physicality of men and women as a basis for difference in treatment, in terms of work, pay, education and opportunity. Her work on the stereotype (p63-72) and the woman as an object of male fantasy (p213-221) is colourful and compelling.

Bobby Baker the performance artist describes the need to be passionate about what one wants to say, Germaine Greer is passionate, essentially she wants to communicate to everyone and not just to academics and to extremists. We have to reflect on how we think today as we make work. Our aim MUST be to challenge or else what is the point? Elizabeth Wurzel takes a turned-in selfish attitude to feminism in her essay, which does not adequately take into account the breadth and sense of social relevence of Germaine Greer. In our own work are we doing what we do for the audience or for ourselves?

As artists we have the power to define ourselves and our work through the unique languages of our puppetry- Margaret Walters ends her book with a prophetic point that a refreshed and enlivened feminism will come not from academia but from the real world with new issues and a new language. We are now concerned with feminism AND post colonial and queer theatre- which already hints at fascinating new hybrids.

Bibliography:

Greer G. (1970) The Female Eunuch. (reprinted 2006) Harper CollinsPublishers. London
Walters M(2005) Feminism A Very Short Introduction.Oxford University Press. Oxford
Wurzel E. (2006) The New C-Word Harper CollinsPublishers .London

Process and Performance

As you know if you are familiar with the course descriptors you have to be comfortable and able to locate your work within current thinking about performance and this is the case even if you say you are only interested in performing for children. The extent to which you are explicit about your underlying ideas is up to you and up to your material. In this module you are required to be much more conscious than in the past about your process. To do this the whole group will need to be involved with the process of each puppeteer.

Current thinking about performance relates it to gender, race, ethnicity and sexuality. As women performers, you are inside a theoretical framework that includes feminist, queer and post-colonial performance. Please note that I favour the term "performance" over "theatre" because I think the former embraces a much wider range of presentation. Find out about these terms and see how much they might apply to your work to date.

Useful books: Thanks to Kay for providing some very useful background information again.

Germaine Greer. I am reading The Female Eunuch at the moment- pretty relentless, but excellent at unpacking our presuppositions and attitudes in a readable way. I will review it soon.
other books on Feminism- look on Amazon and there is a really good cheap second hand list.

THIS IS ESSENTIAL:

Elaine Aston and Geraldine Harris 2008 Performance Practice and Process (contemporary women practitioners) by Palgrave-Macmillan New York and Hampshire UK

because it is practical and based on practical workshops with women artists. The account of the workshop with Bobby Baker (my work has been likened to hers) even mentions 'the outside eye'. A VERY USEFUL BOOK. If you don't read anything else PLEASE read this.

Queer theatre has a few titles- on Amazon

There are quite a lot of books which explore critical perspectives of post-colonial theatre- Native American Indians, African, Australian etc

During the module you will be required to:

• Lead a workshop
  
• Publish and comment on the Blog
  
• Make, record and perform a 'gender aware' solo performance.

• Leading a work-shop which tackles any of the above as background for your piece. So for example, IF a puppeteer is making her work influenced by African studies we might be able to explore her interpretation of post-colonial performance and unearth attitudes towards ethnicity, politics, the place of women etc. Please see the Aston-Harris book above for what to include in your workshop.

I will use parts of a piece of my own “Holiday in Babylon” to illustrate those aspects of politics and feminism which inform my work.

I want you to learn about my process by being INSIDE my work to help me to develop some ideas. From this session you will then have a blueprint of sorts to help you plan your workshops.

Your workshop will lead directly into making the mock-up for your piece.
PLEASE COME WITH IDEAS-BUT MOST OF ALL SOMETHING YOU ARE PASSIONATE TO SAY. (see Bobby Baker in Aston Harris)

• Publishing and commenting on the Blog. You will each have a three days a week when you have to publish some ideas about your piece backing up your ideas with literature, quotes from different members of the group, video, photos etc. On the other four days you are required to spend 15 minutes minimum a day commenting on the blogs of your colleagues. We will make a schedule for this.

• The aim of the module is to enable you to produce a “gender aware performance”. I have decided to drop the title 'Magic' and leave you more open, but if it is a help then go ahead use it. You may use any type of puppet from the rod puppet genr eor family. Do some research and feel free to come up with some ideas for any special sessions you think you might need for a specific puppet type eg.table-top, otome etc
  

Please let me have your comments asap because this post will form the Individual Learning Plans.