PUSH Festival: Kim Kardashian Confession

As PUSH festival prepares to kick off the New Year with some fantastic fringe at HOME Manchester, Mighty Heart Theatre talks Kim Kardashian, body image and confession

Feature by Jennifer Chamberlain | 15 Jan 2016

Nothing says January like a big dose of self-loathing. It’s the same every year: mince pie guilt sets in, Instagram feeds fill up with photos of kale smoothies and treadmills and, before we know it, #NewYearNewMe is trending on Twitter. The annual avalanche of advertising keeps ‘losing weight’ at the top of the list of most popular New Year’s resolutions. Whether we need to or not, we’re told we should lose weight, and every inch of media space is taken up to tell us why and how – join a gym! Follow this diet plan! Buy this fitness DVD! – and we do. Some of us keep it up for a few months (after all, gym memberships are expensive) but most of us give up within a few weeks and look for alternative ways to remedy the post-Christmas body blues. Looking for suggestions this year? Talk about it!

When I Feel Like Crap I Google Kim Kardashian Fat is a piece of confessional theatre which recounts true stories about body image and self-esteem. A script created entirely from interviews with women aged between 16 and 90, the play explores the relationship between the way women are represented in society and the way they view themselves. It weaves together the colourful confessions of more than 100 women and offers an insight into womanhood that is both hilarious and heartbreaking.  

At the helm of the production are two working-class Northern lasses, Lisa-Marie Hoctor and Samantha Edwards of Mighty Heart Theatre. Brought together by the desire to make the kind of theatre that they wanted to see, the pair are driven by a shared belief that theatre has the power to educate and make a lasting impact on audiences.

Exploring body image with real stories

In keeping with the play’s verbatim style, the idea and title for the piece were born from a wine-fuelled conversation between friends. “Out of the blue one of my dearest friends said, 'When I feel like crap I Google Kim Kardashian fat.' I whipped out my phone, wrote it in the memo section and started to mull over the idea of creating a confessional theatre piece exploring body image with real stories,” explains Hoctor. “Before we knew it the idea had snowballed and every time we'd mention it to people, they would confess their own stories.”

Confessional theatre asks a lot of its audience. It asks us to reveal our secrets and lay our souls bare, and it completely strips away all of the conventional methods of storytelling where actors perform and spectators watch. In this type of performance, the actors no longer reveal a narrative, but rather play the experiences of the audience members back to them. Intimate and illuminating, they hold up a mirror for us to see ourselves.

“Verbatim material delivers a richness and honesty that we would not be able to match. It also allows our interviewees to become part of the process and the creative world of the work,” explains Edwards. “It empowers people to tell their stories,” Hoctor adds, expanding on the importance of a collective process. “It's a great feeling when someone you've interviewed comes to watch a performance and sees their story brought to life. It makes the work about them, not us. By having such a wide age range, we can all see ourselves in the piece. There’s a story in there for everyone. ”

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So important is the idea of sisterhood and shared female experience to the company’s work that it comes as no surprise to hear the pair describe themselves as feminists. The duo’s approach reveals an impressive lack of ego, with an aim to represent all women rather than tell the story through their own personal experiences.

“Feminism is inevitably part of our work because it's part of us. It’s a belief in equality. It's empowering for us as two young women to have set up a company, which also employs other women and champions the stories of women. You can't ignore that our industry leans towards more parts and opportunities for men but hopefully we are addressing that in our own little way.”

Mighty Heart Theatre on themes of empowerment

For both Mighty Heart and their audiences, the theme of empowerment is key. This feeling of empowerment seems to stem from the platform provided for women to speak out and share past experiences, no matter how personal, destructive or embarrassing.

“The pressure to lose baby weight and the constant comparisons of our bodies to other people's was a big recurring theme with teenagers through to middle-aged women,” explains Hoctor. Indeed, ideals of how women should look and behave are not unique to the 21st century and societal pressures to fit the mould can be felt by women through the generations. Yet it’s hard to imagine a time when the celebrity culture wasn’t completely embedded in our lives, when social media, and even the internet, were yet to be invented. In many ways, the development of technology has created a world in which women communicate more often but less honestly.

“There were some massive differences too. It was inspiring to hear about yonder years, of women championing each other and paying each other compliments,” she adds.  Edwards describes one particular scene in the play which depicts two elderly women talking about the modest notion of ‘make do and mend.’ They discuss sharing a wedding dress to avoid being seen as show-offs, an element of humility made all the more poignant when compared to modern-day selfie culture. "We don't do this anymore, and giving those ladies the chance to share their stories keeps this alive."

When I Feel Like Crap I Google Kim Kardashian Fat is a story of stories told by many different women in many different ways.  While the subject matter is often serious and touches on issues such as disordered eating, Mighty Heart insists that the overall piece is light-hearted. A decision to create a high-energy piece, complete with sing-songs, wacky outfits and giggles, is a clever way of creating an atmosphere of acceptance. Perhaps confessional theatre, based on real people rather than imagined characters, is the most entertaining, illuminating and moving of all.


When I Feel Like Crap I Google Kim Kardashian Fat will be performed as part of PUSH Festival at HOME, Manchester, Fri 22 Jan and Sun 24 Jan

http://homemcr.org/event/push-festival