Photo courtesy of the Artist
Free Admission
Free Admission
I am excited to see the North American premiere of Free Admission at the 2020 PuSh festival. Free Admission is a new work by UK theatremaker Ursula Martinez. It's a monologue about spectacle, commodification, honesty and taking your clothes off. And yes, she is building an actual brick wall on stage. Early in her career in the 1990s, Martinez gained notoriety for frequent nudity, and huge acclaim for experimental shows, including A Family Outing in which her parents play themselves on stage.
She answered a few questions about her process and her place in the current landscape of creativity and self promotion.
Kris Rothstein: Do you create work with a sense of the audience and interaction, or do you follow your creative compulsions wherever they lead?
Ursula Martinez: I think I generally follow my creative compulsion, however, as an artist I have always been drawn to creating work for the live experience. So in that sense I assume that within the creative compulsion there is always a sense, whether that be instinctive or conscious, of the live audience and the interaction with them.
Rothstein: What is a particular piece of art that has inspired you?
Martinez: I am constantly being inspired by art and artists: David Hoyle (a UK anarcho-punk, queer, alt-drag artist extraordinaire, who has an amazing ability to improvise on stage), every show from Australian company Back to Back Theatre [presenting The Democratic Set at PuSh 2020], Liz Aggiss (a contemporary dance/cabaret/theatremaker who is in her sixties and still creating fierce performance work) and, without wanting to blow my own trumpet, the work of Lucy McCormick, whose last two shows I have had the pleasure of directing. You may remember Triple Threat from last year's PuSh Festival.
Rothstein: You have been called a provocateur. What do you think you are provoking or what prompts that description?
Martinez: Again my provocation is instinctive rather than strategic. I take my clothes off a lot, it may be as simple as that.
Rothstein: What is the meaning of personal presence, revelation and exhibition for you in this moment when everything seems to be on display? How has the act of presenting the female body changed in your work over your career?
Martinez: The act of revelation and exhibitionism, for me, has always been intended as an act of rebellion, to present female nudity from a place of autonomy, empowerment and agency. As a young, white, cis-female, with a body that fulfilled western patriarchal beauty standards, it could be argued that in the past, my ‘rebellion’ was limited in its impact. But now that I am in my mid fifties it’s getting stronger by the day!!!
Rothstein: You present a character with your own name and biography, but your work disrupts expectations about the “authentic self” and artistic construction. How do you develop and balance that interplay?
Martinez: To some people, as an 'over-sharer,' I don’t balance it. I always say I am an expert in nothing, other than myself, and I prefer to make work about subjects that I know about.
But whilst I use the ‘self’ and personal experience and identity as the starting point for making work, I believe that I generally manage to move beyond the narcissistic self and speak to a wider audience about universal human themes.
Rothstein: What are you doing and/or thinking about at this point in your career that you couldn’t have imagined when you began performing?
Martinez: Living a reasonably comfortable life from working exclusively as an artist. I would never have imagined this could be possible twenty-five years ago when I started out. Being in demand as a director, is something I hadn’t planned for ten years ago and am really happy about.
My infamous magic striptease act that I made twenty years ago is going to be staged as a big flashmob, installation/dance piece with a hundred women!!! This is the idea/scheme I am currently working on.
Free Admission runs January 31 and February 1 at 8:30 p.m. and February 2 at 4 p.m. at the Scotiabank Dance Centre in Vancouver.