Rhiannon Faith’s Scary Shit is a collaboration with Maddy Morgan and psychotherapist Joy Griffiths. Faith and Morgan’s performance draws on autobiographical subject matter that emerged during therapy sessions as part of the creative process. The duo uncover a darker side of womanhood that is rarely thrown into light with such disarming honesty, facilitated by their ever-evolving and empowering friendship.
A little tipsy and a little befuddled, the audience are confronted by an abundance of fluffy pink props in a trashy engendering of space. At this point it could go either way as both Morgan and Faith repeatedly break out of the fourth wall, explaining the decisions and meanings behind each of their interrupted, or ‘failed’ performance phrases. As Morgan painstakingly pumps air from a foot pump into Faith’s face mask at her command, I wonder if a codependent relationship will unfold. They boss each other about, helping and hindering in a way that reveals the motives behind each friend’s actions. Their dysfunctional relationship translates well into a dysfunctional performance. The true success is how both performance and friendship evolve into an honest and moving embodiment of womanhood, affecting for both male and female audience members.
The show is structured by a series of vignettes in which the duo alternate between starring and supporting roles. Each section is formed around a subject that arose in therapy and is framed by thoughtless antics or the authoritative voice of psychotherapist Joy Griffiths from recorded sessions. Scenes are named around fears: Fight or Flight, Knot Dance, Phone Dump, Scary Shag, I Haven’t Had My Smear Test. The reliving of autobiographical narratives creates a purging or rewriting of memories in a phenomenological sense. On talking to Faith she explains how the exhausting climaxes appear at different points in the show on different nights according to her own emotions in the moment.
After a scrappy start, as Morgan begins to dance, these girls mean business. The Knot Dance translates sailor’s knots to anxious tummy knots to a vivid depiction of the physicality of infertility. Morgan’s evocative dance phrases tantalise the audience in snippets and give integrity to the performance. With each one, we feel her pain, frustration, and confusion at the topic in hand. Their gravity is made stronger by their framing. Faith’s set-up using humour, silliness, and storytelling makes for a powerfully revealing form. When one dance phrase is repeated, the second time with the addition of Faith’s narration, the I Haven’t Had My Smear Test poem transforms from an abrupt and aggressive series of gestures into a dynamic expression of irrational fears and complex imagery.
Transitional moments for the pair’s friendship arise when Morgan abandons her role as Faith’s assistant on stage. We see her vulnerability, which Faith is also forced to consider. The suspended balloon tied in rope, like a buoy, shields Morgan’s face while Faith has to lie on the floor to speak into the abandoned microphone. Dancing behind the buoy creates a sense of anonymity: Morgan’s head is replaced by knots of rope in a struggle to identify what or how she feels. Shaking, twitching and wringing hands morph into acutely nuanced tremors that run through Morgan’s body into an articulate movement vocabulary when her voice fails her.
By frankly recalling real experiences both serious and trivial, their consequences are heightened. The result of thanking someone for an unwanted dry-hump, for example, throws into stark reality the social constructs that created both this action and the response to it. The piece is full of content that prompts viewers to question gender roles in society. It appeals to every woman and hopefully opens the eyes of every man. Dedicated to their cause, Faith and Morgan continue this interrogation at the bar, drawing unlikely people together in frank conversations as the night draws in. I am left with a powerfully abiding image of the pair sat on their pink bench after Morgan’s eventual break down. Out of nowhere, in the highlight of a breath, their bodies, slightly tilted to one side in perfect harmony, are so in tune that for those few seconds I hold my breath with them too.