Viv Gordon discusses new work Cutting Out
Viv Gordon, Artistic Director of Viv Gordon Company, is not only an artist but an activist. Over the years, her work has championed social justice for survivors of child sexual abuse (CSA), and reshaped art into a political space. Her new production, Cutting Out, co-written and directed by Tom Roden, tackles this very difficult subject through an interactive performance piece. We were eager to ask her about this challenging project.
Hi Viv. Thank you so much for taking time to chat with us today. CSA is a devastating topic to tackle. What prompted you initially to want to make art about it?
For me, making art about CSA survival is a political act. The experience is shrouded in shame and secrecy which makes it hard to articulate what happened to us but also what it is like to live as a survivor in a culture that silences and overlooks us. My art making is an attempt to put language and imagery around our hidden stories – to break silence and to take ownership of our own narratives. It’s borne out of sheer frustration and a belief in the arts as an alchemical space to create beauty and connection from the most devastating truths.
What difficulties did you come across in trying to voice experience of CSA?
The challenges are multiple. We’ve worked really diligently as a company to ensure we can do this work safely and sustainably by ensuring access (for both artists and audiences) is at the heart of our making and touring processes. We face a lot of nervousness from programmers about the work and whether it’s too traumatic. Creatively, the job is always about how to take audiences on a journey and tell challenging stories with care and love. The collaboration between Tom and I started with a shared love of comedy, so we think a lot about how we can use humour productively to hold an audience, and also hold the narrative without backing away from the content or sugarcoating anything.
Can you tell us about the form Cutting Out will take? It’s part performance but also part installation – is that right?
Yes the performance happens within the installation of paper dolls holding hands. Audiences cut out new dolls at each show so the installation grows each time. The dolls represent our community of CSA survivors standing together to make change. We are working towards 11 million dolls which is the estimated number of adult CSA survivors in the UK: an incomprehensible number that we try to make real through this work. The installation is very evocative and has been beautifully designed by Imogen Harvey-Lewis. The performance tells my autobiography from abuse to activism through the lens of my hands, from isolation to connection, standing hand in hand with the emerging survivor community. The combination of performance and installation frames my story as one of 11 million stories that have historically been silenced and now urgently need to take up more cultural space.
Why did you decide that paper was the material that best worked with your story?
The image of paper dolls was the catalyst for making Cutting Out – it came first. I was trying to understand the 11 million statistic, to make it make sense and work out how to visually represent it. Paper dolls evoke childhood in a really poignant way. The fragility of paper is also helpful – it tears and crumples easily and needs to be handled with care. Its ubiquity also reads well as an image. Most importantly the dolls are holding hands, they are connected which is a powerful rebuttal to the isolation survivors feel in contemporary culture.
How do audiences respond to being asked to participate during the show?
The show is very intimate and conversational. There is very little audience participation during the show itself – moments when I go into the audience to show people the paper dolls up close. At one point I shake someone’s hand, at others I ask everyone to clap or reach out to hold someone’s hand (if they want to – we’re all about consent obviously!) The participation really comes afterwards in inviting audiences to cut out paper dolls as an act of solidarity with the CSA survivor community – many people are thinking about survivors they know and love – it enables conversations that can be hard to have as part of everyday life. For survivors in the audience, this can be a very powerful experience – for many, it is their first time feeling connected to a wider community motivated for social change. It’s a simple act of craftivism that is very accessible and grounding for audiences before they leave the theatre.
This seems like so much more than a solo performance. Have you had feedback on the production from CSA survivors who have seen it?
Thanks – yeah – it is more than a solo performance. It uses my autobiography to draw out much bigger conversations about the politics of survival and contemporary culture. The feedback from CSA survivor audiences has been wonderful. Sometimes people are quite anxious when they arrive – it is often the first time someone has been in a survivor-led environment where there are conversations about abuse outside of therapy spaces. Audiences have told us how safe and held it is, what a relief it is to be able to engage in this content collectively, and how they didn’t expect to laugh or have such a nice time.
Thanks very much to Viv for talking to us about this bold and brave production. Cutting Out takes place at Gloucester Guildhall on Tuesday 20 and Wednesday 21 May at 7:30pm, and again at Tobacco Factory Theatres, Bristol on Thursday 5 to Saturday 7 June at 7.30pm. You can find out more here.
