Ciggie Stories @ CCA, Glasgow
In performed reading Ciggie Stories, Emily Furneaux reflects on the situations and people she used to share cigarettes with
As an ex-smoker myself, I know firsthand how smoking is rarely about the mere consumption of smoke and nicotine. It is about the people we smoke with – that feeling of connection, or, when alone, of independence. It is something to do with yourself, always with an air of coolness, always with a feeling of anarchy. Of course, it doesn’t make sense at all – just like any addiction, it is a bit trite.
In Ciggie Stories: Twenty Tales of Love & Sorrow, Emily Furneaux describes the situations and people she used to share cigarettes with: five men, to be exact, from her alcoholic father, to her late step-father, to ex-boyfriends and crushes.
It’s the details of Furneaux's performative reading at CCA that make it immediately endearing. The floor is sparsely decorated with nothing but a large, square sheet of white paper, a huge lighter and ashtray drawn on it. The audience sits on the floor around the sheet of paper, making it an intimate circle of strangers. Furneaux is dressed as a cigarette, putting her feet in orange paint, and then moving over to the two-dimensional ashtray on the ground, immersing her feet in grey dust. At the beginning, the audience are given rolled-up paper cigarettes, with an introductory message inside. After the show, Furneaux hands out edible cigarettes and drinks that taste like smoke.
As a multi-disciplinary artist, it is Furneaux's first time performing her writing, and one can sense a certain haste and nervousness during the 45-minute reading. Furneaux delivers the reading without looking up from her notes, making it harder for listeners to connect, and her rhythmic incantations make it difficult to actually grasp the meaning of her words. Connecting alliterations like nursery rhymes, Furneaux's prose is elegantly written, and its meticulous detail showa great potential for Ciggie Stories, but the performance aspect needs stronger execution.
Ciggie Stories: Twenty Tales of Love & Sorrow, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, run ended
cargocollective.com/emilyfurneaux