Drag Queen film.

Acknowledgements This project would not have been possible without the financial support from Edge Hill University and the selfless help of many co-artists, colleagues, friends and the random passer-by. Thank you to Homotopia for its 2012 premiere.

Tweet: @MarkEdwardQueer @MissGaleForce

Council House Movie Star

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Council House Movie Star

The research displaces drag queens from the comfortable staging of traditional performance arenas, to position the camp costume and highly charged personas within quotidian experiences. The protagonist of this practice-based research, Gale Force, has an aesthetic style and costume that locates her in the 1960s, which is sharply juxtaposed against the backdrop of today’s youth culture. (Edward, 2014: 149)

About Council House Movie Star was originally a collaboration between performance artist and writer Mark Edward, designer Olivia Du Monceau, film director Rosa Fong, videographer Mark Fremaux, fine art painter Pete Bennett and sound maker Karen Lauke. The project was funded by Edge Hill University and launched the opening of the international LGBT arts festival Homotopia in 2012. The work consisted of a short film of the drag persona Gale Force, a fading drag queen in a socially deprived economy going about daily life; and an immersive gallery installation where Gale’s council house was installed. The house illuminated the gritty and glamorous aesthetics of the 1970s with a variety of props that related to Mark Edward’s childhood; a childhood era of strong working class northern women with highly charged personas and the ability to mark their terror-itory with such back street chic. Gale inhabited this space for three weeks in Liverpool, alongside other ageing drag queens and youth from the local council estate. Such immersion invited live viewership and participation. Although the film was part of a larger scale immersive installation, it has its own identity and can be appreciated independently from its original setting as part of the live performance. The movie draws viewers into the poignant absurdities and eccentricities of life, giving the viewer a peek behind Gale Force's dirty net curtains and providing real moments of fun underscored with a sense of sadness and loss. The work strikes a balance between being entertaining and inviting the viewer to think about the difficult experience of ageing in non-heterosexual contexts and an image obsessed culture. The film has been disseminated in Liverpool, London, and Barcelona and continues to be invited to showcase at national and international film festivals and academic platforms.

Research

Padding It Out:

Based on interdisciplinary practice-based and autobiographical methodology this work captures performance art at the intersection between the artistic self and the public performer, capturing in film form a persona who brings to light some of the difficulties of living as an ageing gender or ageing sexual minority in low income settings.

Ageing men and women tend to gain weight in later life and this needed to be represented in Council House Movie Star. During this creative research process Mark Edward purposefully gained 56 lbs in weight. This body expansion was documented throughout the rehearsal process and evident in the final edits of the film. This body growth displays the ageing and expanding flesh, on the margins of body-normativity, as it gravitated towards a larger mature form.

Research questions: 1) How does an offstage existence of a drag artist invite reflection on issues of age, sexuality and class? 2) What is the impact of using life/art displacements within live performance context? 3) Can a tragi-comic characterisation of a drag artist create both humour and pathos in an exploration of life-stories? Further reading about the research on Council House Movie Star can be found in: Edward, M. (2014), ‘Council House Movie Star: Que(e)rying the Costume’, Scene, 2: 1+2, pp. 147-153. Intellect Ltd. A forthcoming book chapter (Edward, M & Farrier, S.) titled: ‘Doing Me: Researching as Me- searching. Ruminations on research methodology in drag performance’, Methodological and Ethical Issues in Sex and Sexuality Research: Contemporary Essays. Edited by Claes, T, Porrovecchio, A and Reynolds, P. BB Publishing, London.

Biographies Mark Edward: Writer and Producer Mark is a contemporary dance maker and performance artist. He is currently a Senior Lecturer in Performance at Edge Hill University where his overarching research areas include ageing, gender and sexuality. Mark’s output includes performance work and academic publications based around the themes of ageing dancers, ageing drag queens and 'dancephobia' in boys and men. Mark’s career in the arts spans over twenty years. He has worked for Rambert Dance Company, performed and toured with the American queer icon Penny Arcade and performed with Barcelona based Dance Theatre company Senza Tempo. Mark has written for Animated, Dancing in the UK, Dance Review Magazine, as well as Supernova Books and Emerald Group Publishing. His recent article 'Stop Prancing About: boys, dance and the reflective glance' is published in a 2014 Special Issue of Emerald's Men Doing (In)equality Research. His writing on Council House Movie Star is published in Intellect’s Scene journal entitled: 'Council House Movie Star: Que(e)rying The Costume'. Mark has a forthcoming book chapter (co-authored with Stephen Farrier) entitled 'Doing Me: Researching as Me-searching. Ruminations on research methodology in drag performance' in Methodological and Ethical Issues in Sex and Sexuality Research: Contemporary Essays (2015). A further co-written book chapter with dance writer Fiona Bannon entitled: 'Being in Pieces: Integrating Dance, Identity and Mental Health' in The Oxford Handbook for Dance and Well-Being is due out in 2016.

Gale Force: Council House Movie Star Gale was found abandoned on the steps of a church wrapped in a copy of Behind The Times daily newspaper. Her early years are shrouded in mystery and amnesia. She can vaguely remember a neatly placed blow to the back of the head with a frying pan. This was later confirmed when forensic tests revealed a substantial amount of Teflon and bits of bacon in the nape of her neck. She was fostered out to a local family. Every Saturday her foster parents would take her for a run in the country. They would make Gale run up and down; up and down. Years later she found out it was a rifle range in Chorley. Gale lives off social welfare and has tendencies to shop lift Findus Crispy Pancakes, bottles of Pomagne and Coal Tar Soap. Her social worker is called Dawn Patrol and her bessy mates are Chris D' Bray, Donna Reah and a street rat (named Bubonic) that has made a home for itself in Gale’s dilapidated kitchen cupboard.

Rosa Fong: Film Director Rosa is a filmmaker with a dark past in experimental films. She then went commercial - directing ads, pop promos and corporate videos. Her more recent work is a stir-fry mix across the genres of documentary, shorts and features. With commissions from the BBC and Channel 4, she has won the Black Arts Award from the Arts Council of England and New Directors from the British Film Institute. A dim sum taster of her directing credits includes, Red a sweet and sour tale about love, marriage and Elvis. Chinese for Beginners, made for Channel 4 and Forrest Whittaker’s production company is a chop-suey style look at Chinese Philosophy. Water Wings is a dark tale of infanticide. There is also a side order of arts documentary, Linear Rhythm and experimenta, A Dream of Venus Butterfly made through the Arts Council and BBC. On the feature film menu, is the multi-award winning Cut Sleeve Boys, for which Rosa was Associate Producer.

Mark Fremaux: Director of Photography Mark is a creative visual image maker. Mark sees himself primarily in terms of a photographer and cinematographer. He started taking photographs when he was nine years old and now he is a Fellow of both the British Institute of Professional Photography and the Royal Photographic Society. Mark’s career has led him to teaching of Film and Television at Edge Hill University and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He has worked on a large variety of programmes ranging from The Olympics and The World Cup through to The General Election and Newsnight via drama such as Boys From The Blackstuff and Doctor Who and including Tomorrow’s World, Old Grey Whistle Test, The Sky at Night, CrimeWatch, Horizon and Children in Need. Much of my time in television was spent at the BBC as both a Television Cameraman and as a Vision Mixer.

Karen Lauke: Sound Design Karen is a composer, sound artist and designer based in Manchester. She is primarily interested in creating experimental music and sound for installation, live performance, film, site-specific theatre and exhibition. Karen's work has been presented and performed throughout the UK and internationally – at events in the USA, Germany, Spain, Canada, Portugal, the Czech Republic and Korea with recent sound design work winning a silver award at World Stage Design (2013). Her theatre design credits include, Midsummer Night's Dream; The Seagull; The Owl and the Pussycat;The Odyssey; Book of the Dead; More Light; The Tempest; All because of Molly (regional tour); The Enemy Within; Billy, The Monster and Me (national tour); House of Memories (national tour).

Olivia du Monceau: Designer Olivia du Monceau lives and works as a set and costume designer in the UK. Her career has developed through a number of theatrical disciplines; including theatre, exhibitions and art installations. Recent prominent collaborations have been with LGBT organisation Homotopia exhibiting the life of transgender icon April Ashley and designing with the site specific company dreamthinkspeak. In 2012 she was nominated for an off the West End Award and in 2013 she was selected to represent the UK as part of the World Stage Awards exhibits. At present her work can be seen at the Southwark Playhouse for Secret\Heart’s A Bright Room Called Day. Her commission by the Liverpool Art Biennial reconstructing the infamous Peacock Room for the Whistler Exhibition is on view at The Bluecoat Gallery.