Helen Cuinn is a recipient of Arts Trust Scotland funding, PSYBT business support and awards from the Donald Dewar Arts trust and Glasgow West Regeneration Agency. She is an invited artist for Glasgay 2009 and the resulting show Hair I Am was made in conjunction with Dance House and the CCA Creative Lab programme.

Can you talk a little about your route into theatre? What influences your work these days?

I've been a performer since I left school, starting with a stint as an 18 year old Butlins Redcoat and character performer. Now, almost 10 years down the line, with many weird and wonderful jobs, two college courses and a consistently strong faith in the power of performance under my belt, I'm still here! Influences are harder to pin down - I used to see two or three performances (theatre, film, bands, dance, musicals, whatever I could get my hands on) a week. But the more your involved in the arts, the harder it is to stay fresh to seeing new work. I've become more selective and more precious about my time and so am maybe missing key works that could influence me now.

I have to say I'm still influenced by performances I saw 5 or 10 years ago. I even remember a production I saw in high school - King Stag by Opera Circus - which blew me away (we didn't have any really experimental theatre in Fife but this was very physical, humourous and in an eastern european storytelling style). It utilised direct address to the audience as well as character interaction, featured puppetry and object manipulation, much of the imagery was symbolic and stylised and the actors sang and played instruments live - I'm laughing when I describe this, it basically a checklist for what I like to see in performance and what I like to perform!

Currently I would say I'm excited to see anything by Johnny McKnight's company Random Accomplice and am always in awe of the Tramway season programme (although it makes me feel jealous I will never be a dancer of that calibre or a true European!)

  In the past, you have dealt with issues of identity, usually in humorous solo shows... is this similar, or a new direction?

It's more of the same, but in my defence, I'm not done with it yet! There are so many faces unturned. I also feel that each time I make new work tackling identity, I get a bit better. This is definitely my most adventurous performance yet!

The show is particularly looking at what we get from first impressions of a person and examining in particular the whole gammut of stereotypes that ginger women may or may not identify with. I'm basically asking questions about why we believe in stereotypes... so the audience can expect lots of jokes, a few explosive moments and lots and lots of very OTT characters!

What is it with you and hair?

Well now! Ah've goat a bee in ma bunnet aboot that! Don't get me wrong, I'm no militant Ginger activist, calling for the public hanging of barnet biggots nor a zealous campaigner for seperate societies for hair types. But I do feel that some attitudes to red hair in the UK are extreme and unjustified. It also annoys me that many of the feelings about red hair dates a way back to medieval times and beyond, and yet most of the myths and stories that spawned such feelings have been forgotten. So people have feelings like fear, distaste or lust without actually knowing and questioning the origin of such thinking. Some examples of the roots of these feelings: In medieval times red haired women were popularly believed to have been taken by the devil.

The evidence was the devil's marking, freckles, obvious birthmark or abnormalities on their very pale skin and most evidently their bright pubic hair, the colour of sin. Therefore a woman taken by the devil was obviously sex obsessed and keen to bring other people down to her level. People often think of redheads as fickle, untrustworthy or disloyal - this stems back to the Christian story of Judas' betrayal

Ironically enough, there is no written reference to Judas' ruddy colouring, it is religious art through the ages that used colour theory as symbolism to be read by the viewer - red hair = evil.

I see the theme of ginger hair and it's treatment in Scotland as a metaphor for how we deal with difference. So although it's all about my own experiences as a red head, I hope that people who identify as a different minority groups could identify with the otherness and persecution (which incidently, I don't think is too strong a word in my own personal story. As a adolescent, I was often spat upon and had endless verbal abuse thrown from pub doorways and passing cars)

How does this fit into the Glasgay programme and its themes?

I think many of the issues I highlight about people's reactions to my hair are similar to experiences one might have coming out as gay. I really needed to learn to accept my appearance because I couldn't change it, but it was difficult because people seemed to dislike it or ridicule it. It could be argued that this can be the same experience for a gay man or woman.

Also, I have deliberately pondered the theme of femininity that Glasgay 2009 took as half their programming strand. I have been making this show for two years, and all tied up in the broad theme of identity are my own questions about gender, sexuality and how you present both of these. I think as a young gay artist, these themes are implicit in my performance, are there the moment I step onstage and have the audience look at me... Is she a dyke? is she a femme?

Well, the answer is both really. I refuse to be a stereotype, I think as a performer, you sometimes have to act in a role model capacity and I hope that by presenting the conflicting and changing faces of all the different characters I can be, I'm representing the whole women, hot and not!

You've been involved in the Glasgow Live Art scene for years now. How do you see your place in the Glasgay, or even Glasgow's, aesthetics and scene?

Wow, this is a big question! Um, well, I should start by saying that although I've been around the scene for a number of years as patron, I've only been contributing performance to it for about 2 and a half years. I'm happy in my position of emerging artist because it affords me flexibility and room for learning (read mistakes!).

It also allows me to be flexible with my performance styles. I think that the audience who saw my presentation Looking for Laura Quinn at New Works New Worlds this summer may not recognise me as the performer in Hair I Am. The theme of identity is the same, but Hair is flamboyant, outrageous and explosive! I can get away with this because I'm not well known for doing one type of performance. I hope to make an impact on the Glasgow scene but I guess only time will tell! Right now I'm happy to be in this great festival and making watchable performance for anybody who is willing to come see it!