After a tremendous performance of BAD [w]OMEN: Mirrors, Tulpa wanted to get in contact with BAD [w]OMEN’s Jennie Hall to have a chat and find out how their show came to be.
Why the Adelaide Fringe as a place for your show?
We love the Adelaide Fringe – two of us have worked as staff here for the last few years and it’s such a unique and exciting festival. Given our history working for the festival too, we felt like we understood its dynamic and had enough good people behind us here. It’s also not quite as intimidating as Edinburgh in terms of a place to debut a show, so it was a no brainer!
How did the show originate? All three of you? A conversation? Did you seek out other collaborators after the original idea?
We all separately wanted to do a show, and then one drunken night at the Edinburgh Fringe this year, we just committed to it together. The group has always been just us three – we all had such a similar idea about what we wanted the show to be, and Chloe and Rosie had previously done comedy together, so it seemed perfect!
What’s the deal with the silver morphsuits? It’s an Adelaide summer!
Yeah look, we didn’t think that one through properly – haha! There’s a couple of reasons. The show is called Mirrors because we hope that audiences see something of themselves or a world they recognise in our satire, so getting reflective suits was a fun way to visualise that. Also it’s important to us to have a brand and visibility. A lot of people stop us and ask what we’re doing, or say they’ve seen us around and it’s because we’re recognisable.
Why should people come to see your show? What sets it apart?
Our show is a sketch show with a twist – it’s an attempt at something new, and at making something that sends a message without being preachy. We’re massive on taking the piss out of people to take away the power they hold and I think that’s quite unique in terms of a Fringe show. Also there’s party poppers, glitter and amazing tunes!!
If you could go back in time, what would you tell/warn yourselves of, in the making of the show?
Potentially get more breathable costumes!! Honestly think if we could go back in time, we’d maybe actually give ourselves a little more time. Doing a season with a brand new show is always hard, and inevitably it gets really intense. We’d probably tell ourselves to just give ourselves a break a little bit more – rest, spend time alone, eat well and try and stay healthy mentally and physically!
You know what takes dedication? Wearing a silver latex jumpsuit outdoors on a sticky Adelaide evening. The ladies of BAD w[OMEN] had no trouble running, jumping, dancing and beating one another up with plastic baseball bats in their silver outfits, even with the humidity bearing down on us like a musty cave bear.
BAD w[OMEN] has all the trademarks of a standard sketch show – from handmade props and costumes to slapstick and easily recognisable archetypes of characters for each scene. But this show also went beyond the standard – tying all the seemingly unrelated sketches together into an insanely interconnected storyline.
What’s more, sketch by sketch the audience was exposed to a strong underlying theme of feminism and women’s struggles against workplace sexism – dished out left, right and centre by the recurring voice-over of sketch-show boss and first-class sleaze-bag ‘Dave’. The show tackled the really meaty issues of women’s day-to-day struggles through punchy and provoking humour that never felt preachy yet stuck with us well after the show was finished. This was definitely more than a run-of-the-mill sketch show. This was something more ambitious, and more satisfying to watch. It was comedy with substance – and that’s always something worth sticking around for.
This is a show that gets the audience engaged with the characters of the story – something which is unusual for a sketch show but which played out triumphantly for BAD w[OMEN]. With each passing scene the audience found themselves wondering what would happen to our Spanish lesson heroine Maria, or the book club of bubbly-guzzling newly-minted feminists. And when we weren’t seeing the strings of these stories come together we were treated to some sensual Fringe box-office service, an intense Harry Potter rendition and the antics of the Producers’ own resident ghost.
Over-the-top, sharp, timely and non-stop funny, this show is a must-see for lovers of comedy and people looking for something rather different yet oddly familiar to sink their teeth into. It’s comedy with heart and balls (the lady kind). In BAD w[OMEN]’s own words, ‘join us as we tackle the big stuff. And the small stuff. Because when you take the piss, you take the power.’
After a successful first season of their podcast, Deviant Women creators Alicia Carter and Lauren Butterworth are taking to the stage to bring you the wild and wonderful stories of two historical women– Julie D’Aubigny and Madame Blavatsky. In the lead-up to their first show, Tulpa sat down with Deviant Women to talk podcasts, dressing up and what they have in store for fans this year.
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How did Deviant Women (the podcast) start out and what inspired you to start it?
LB: Both of us are doing PhDs in this kind of general area so our research interests intersect in this kind of area of Deviant women, but also issues of representations of femininity, feminist revisionism, female archetypes, monstrous women. So, we’ve talked about this for years. We’ve spent many, many hours just talking about this stuff because we both really love it. I’m a podcast fan, [Alicia is] not, she actually doesn’t listen to podcasts.
AC: It’s terrible because there’s nothing else I would do without engaging with the actual thing. I don’t write stories and not read stories… I don’t try to write novels about reading novels. And yet, I podcast, without listening to podcasts.
LB: So I was the podcast fan, and basically I listen to a lot of podcasts that are by women and have very conversational female banter about serious subject matter but very casual, conversational, funny way. Really I was like, this sounds like a conversation Alicia and I would have– we could probably do this. I think one day in Gresham place we were standing outside of a bar and I was like, ‘Do you want to do a podcast about deviant women?’ and [Alicia] was just like, ‘Alright, I’ll text you about it’, and she did. She sent me a text with a bunch of women she’d thought of and I was like, ‘Oh shit, we’re doing this– cool.’
AC: I was like, ‘I’m along for the ride, as long as I don’t have to do any of the technical stuff.’
What were some of the issues and setbacks you had to face in setting up the podcast in order for it to have a life of its own?
AC: Well it’s easy to start it, but then to have it take on a life of its own… that’s the hard thing.
LB: There were little things, like getting a microphone. My boyfriend is a musician and a sound engineer, so he had microphones but they weren’t the right type of microphone for recording voices. So we had to get over the initial hurdle of ‘we have to get a microphone; we need a website to host the sound files on’. We had to do a little research about what are the best podcasting hosts.
AC: How do we get on to iTunes? How do we even do that?
LB: There was just a lot of Googling and learning by figuring stuff out, but we’re learning that kind of stuff constantly. That was probably the biggest learning hurdle- what are the practical things that we need to do to launch, to have a website? Luckily, we used a lot of people that we know.
AC: Yeah, a friend of mine is an art director and she did a logo for us, which was great. Our logo is such a simple idea, but it was just so perfect. All she’s done is turn [the name] upside down. But that’s the whole point. We were really lucky with how quickly that all fell into place.
LB: India is one of my oldest friends and she’s a musician and I was like, ‘We’re thinking of doing this podcast about deviant women, do you think you could make us a theme song?’ She came back a week later [and said], ‘I’ve recorded this thing. See what you think.’ Then we had to get a fan-base, and that’s been the hurdle that continues, but also, I think is one that I find a really fun challenge.
AC: You say it was a hurdle, and it definitely has been. I mean, that is the big thing: are people listening to us? Are we just shouting into the void, or what is going on? But to be completely honest, we were absolutely blown away with how many people were listening to us. And where they were listening to us from. When we started we were like, we’ll see where this goes, but oh my god, people were listening. They were leaving reviews and they were contacting us and interacting with us on Twitter. People actually care– there are people out there who are actually interested in what we’re doing.
LB: It kind of feels like we’ve broken away from the pack in terms of the really small podcasts. We might be able to graduate into the next level. We’re hoping this year we’ll crack the next level.
AC: This podcast has really been about empowering women. But [a hard part] is actually gaining the confidence to actually say ‘Oh you know, what we’re doing is actually something of worth.’ This is the whole thing with the deviant women that we talk about– as women we constantly have this reinforcement that what we do isn’t valued as much as what other people do; as what privileged white men do.
LB: This is the biggest hurdle for both of us. I mean, I would love to have more guests and have guests who are personalities in the world that people know. We’ve not ever really approached anyone – everyone we’ve had as a guest has approached us. So this year one of our biggest goals is to overcome that hurdle of having the confidence to realise our podcast is something that people like, is legitimate, and we can approach whoever– because the worst they can say is no.
AC: As naff as it sounds: the biggest hurdle is believing in ourselves.
Do you think your background as PhD students – doing a lot of research, doing a lot of study- has influenced the way you approach this podcast?
LB: I mean, I always look for peer-reviewed journals. Academic texts about the women we talk about.
AC: I remember my sister once said to me ‘Do you just read the Wikipedia entries?’ and I was like, ‘No! We’re researchers!’ We may look at the Wikipedia entry, but that’s not the end in what we research. That kind of need, as academic researchers, to know that the information that we’re finding is peer reviewed, is legitimate. Sometimes the information that we find is conflicting, there are a lot of holes, there are a lot of things that we don’t know, but I think that definitely that background as PhD students and researchers feeds into how we approach researching these women.
LB: And also particularly because we want our podcast to have a focus not only on the women’s biographies, but is also thinking about the social contexts and the way that particularly patriarchal structures play into the way that the women that we highlight engage in the world.
AC: I think that really what we do with the podcast itself is: here is a really interesting story about a really interesting person– take all of our information with a grain of salt.
Are you doing season two of the Deviant Women podcast this year?
AC: Yes, season two will begin on March 22nd.
LB: But there’s probably going to be a bonus episode or two before then. Some inter-seasonal specials. We have an enormous and ever-growing list of women we want to cover, so the challenge is going to be choosing which women to cover in this season and which will have to wait for next time. Honestly though, I would really like to know what our listeners want from us. We’ve had a very history-focused first season and we would like to know- is this what you like? Do you want more of this in season two? Do we throw in more mythology? More literature? What do people want to hear? Because we’re interested in all of it.
Deviant Women creators Alicia Carter and Lauren Butterworth
What made you want to do a stage show of Deviant Women?
AC: Oh my god, do you know what it was? Lauren and I love dress-ups– if someone has a dress-up party we’re like ‘That’s the best news, when is it? Is it in three months?’ I’ll spend the next three months planning my outfit. No worries, we do love dressing up. And I remember saying to Lauren, ‘If only there was some way we could have an excuse to dress up as some of these women from history’, and then we just looked at each other and were like, ‘We should have a live show!’
So, legitimately, what drove our passion to have this live show was wanting to dress up. That is actually what sparked the idea. It’s not what’s still driving the idea– there is some substance to the shows as well, but what started up the idea was that conversation.
LB: This is not the podcast live, this is Deviant Women: the stage show. There’s a lot of podcasts that have live recordings in front of an audience, but it’s not just going to be Alicia and I sitting on two chairs with microphones telling the stories in the same way we would if we were just recording at home. It is a stage version of Deviant Women, so it’s a different product that’s come from the same place, but it’s like the podcast is one part of Deviant Women and it kind of feels like the stage shows are another element. So, we’ll see how that goes.
How did you go about adapting Deviant Women for the stage?
AC: To begin with we actually just thought what we’ll do is we’ll sit down and we’ll record it like we would for a normal podcast. So we did what we normally do– we both decide who will take the lead on each woman. Lauren has a wealth of specialty knowledge in Victoriana, séances, the occult, etc. So it just seemed natural that Lauren would take the lead on Blavatsky, because otherwise I would be re-researching a whole bunch of stuff she already knew. So then D’Aubigny fell to me, which I was perfectly happy with. We just went about researching them separately, doing what we would normally do for an episode, and then we basically just sat down and tried to record it in a similar sort of way that we would for a podcast. From that [we] listened back to find where the really interesting parts lay. What had dramatic appeal, what we could really do something with onstage. That’s not to say that in the stage shows we don’t alter their lives. I mean, it is a fictionalised version.
LB: Well, not a fictional version. It’s a version that based on things that have become legend. It’s more like, this is the legend and these are the stories that are told about them. We can’t verify 100% that they’re true.
AC: Yeah, so listening back to those podcasts we really picked out those moments that were the most sort of interesting, that kind of deconstructed how these women functioned in their societies as well. It is different to the podcast in the fact that we are focusing more on particular parts of their lives rather than giving the entire birth to death, but kind of focusing on the really key moments of interest in their lives.
LB: Pivotal things that make them who they are or show them as being these incredible, ridiculous characters.
AC: So we kind of picked out those moments and asked, where can we go from here? How can we make these moments performative? How can we make these moments dramatic and interesting?
LB: It’s all a work in progress. Even when we perform it, it’ll be probably still a work in progress.
AC: We’re following the chronology in these women’s lives, and there’s going to be some acting– some fabulous acting, oh my god– Oscar award-winning acting will be happening, but it’s not going to be scripted down to letter, you know? It’ll still have that free-flow feeling. And that’s the free-form style of the podcasts themselves.
LB: We have a script, but we might not follow it.
What do you think your audience is going to get out of these shows?
LB: I feel part of the problem we’ve had with this show is not knowing how to categorise it. We’re not quite theatre, we hope that we’re funny but we’re not stand-up comedians. We’re not just a normal event. We’re not strictly storytelling, what are we? So I hope that what audiences get is something that doesn’t fit anywhere, but is different and interesting, entertaining but also informative and maybe gets them a little bit fired up about these women and makes them want to learn a bit more about some people who are also like this, and maybe get them to tune into the podcast.
AC: Yeah, that’s true. But also, I think that it gets them to go away from it and be like, the next person they see being like, ‘Hey, did you know this woman existed? Did you know there was this outrageous woman in 17th century France who was this bisexual swords-woman, opera singer…’
LB: [D’Aubigny] took on literally packs of men at a time. She fought three or four of them at a time.
AC: [For Blavatsky] we’re more the parlour style [séance], it’ll be more like a re-creation. I don’t know that we’ll be calling up any actual spirits.
LB: We hope that’s fun.
AC: It is going to be fun but I think the thing that we really look for with these two [women] is contrasts. Obviously that’s the aesthetic we’re going for with the posters. You look at the D’Aubigny one, it’s pink, it’s flowery, it’s a kind of light hearted, flamboyant story. And then Blavatsky is taking us to that other place. It’s taking us to that dark, mysterious place. So they’re going to be very different shows, both just as entertaining as each other but in very different ways.
LB: Which is why you should see both. We hope the show is fun. We hope that it’s very casual, tongue-in-cheek and we just hope it’s a good time.
Deviant Women will be performing at the Adelaide Fringe on the 26th of February and the 14th of March. You can grab your tickets here. You can learn more about Deviant Women and their podcast on their website, or listen on iTunes. You can find them on Facebook and Twitter.
Tulpa thanks Deviant Women creators Alicia Carter and Lauren Butterworth for taking the time to speak with us. Interview conducted and transcribed by Lisandra Linde.
![In Conversation with: BAD [w]OMEN](https://tulpamagazine.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/bad-women-pic.jpg?w=960)
![BAD [w]OMEN: Mirrors](https://tulpamagazine.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/bad-women.jpg?w=800)
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