Julia Taudevin on Blow-Off and Dario Fo

Returning to Edinburgh with her ‘guerrilla gig theatre’ piece Blow Off as part of a political theatre season to mark Dario Fo’s 90th birthday, Julia Taudevin talks to The Skinny about domestic terrorism, female rage and music

Feature by Amy Taylor | 30 Sep 2016

“Every time that we gather together in a group of people to do anything it’s political,” begins Julia Taudevin. “Particularly gathering together in the same room, breathing the same air, anything about the way we are in the world... I think the whole point of theatre is to consider the human condition, isn’t it?” Fresh from a performance at the Dundee Rep, her 'guerrilla gig theatre' show, Blow Off, which was performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, is set to return to the Traverse Theatre this month as part of a festival of political performance entitled Dancing With Colours, Whipping With Words, Dario Fo & Political Theatre.

The show was inspired by the autobiography of Ann Hansen, a former member of the guerrilla feminist group Direct Action, who along with accomplice Julie Belmas and three others became some of the world’s first so-called “domestic terrorists” because of a series of bombings around Canada in the 1980s. During their campaign, they targeted a hydro substation, a factory alleged to be producing guidance components for nuclear weapons, and perhaps, most famously, a chain of pornography shops. The group’s extreme radicalisation caused Taudevin to wonder – what does terrorism mean?

“Julie [Belmas] was really into early punk, and so there was something for me about wanting to explore direct domestic terrorism, and what terrorism means and how people can come to it. What is a terrorist, what makes a terrorist?” explains Taudevin.

“But also, wanting to link that up with a more feminist question of finding a space for female rage and in a dominant patriarchal world, how female rage isn’t available and then that got me thinking about what is that space? How do we create that space? I didn’t really feel like there was a space for it in straight theatre. I wanted to engage the audience in an active way. So there was something about creating an environment with which we could empathise with that movement, rather than criticise it.”

After dismissing more traditional theatre forms, she realised that music, and specifically, the gig theatre format, was one of the best ways to help get the audience inside the minds of the characters. And so, she collaborated with musicians Kim Moore, Julie Eisenstein and Susan Bear, who fused Direct Action’s love of punk with Taudevin’s own love for the music of Kathleen Hanna (Bikini Kill, The Julie Ruin, Le Tigre) and other leading figures of the Riot Grrrl movement. The result was loud, inescapable, and as Taudevin discovered, visceral.

“Some of the feedback from the Dundee post-show discussion was people going, “I didn’t really understand why, I just felt that it was right,” and I was like, well, that’s great because the whole point of the show is that there isn’t one excuse and there isn’t one reason, and there isn’t one explanation, it’s a combination of the factors in which we live and the overwhelming alienation that we feel moving through the structures of patriarchy and post-capitalism.”

While she admits that the play isn’t for everyone, and that “there are people that fucking hate it,” Taudevin is looking forward to ruffling a few feathers with Blow Off, adding, “I’ll be really disappointed if we don’t get at least one really sexist, misogynist dressing down because the show wouldn’t be doing its job if it doesn’t!”


Blow Off, 12 & 13 Oct, Traverse Theatre, part of Dancing With Colours, Whipping With Words, Dario Fo & Political Theatre, which celebrates the dramatist Dario Fo, his late partner, the actor and feminist writer, Franca Rame and those who make work which challenges authority with satire, anger and humour

http://elevenhq.com/tg_portfolios/dario-fo-artist-activist-inspiration