Calling all StageSiders, welcome back to another installment of StageSide Stories. This time around we talk to Eugénie and Shamira, of the theatre company She Goat. We talk all things theatre, creative industry and their upcoming show Iron Fantasy. So settle in and lets get to it!
To begin, could you introduce yourselves, your roles at She Goat, and tell us a little about Iron Fantasy and what audiences can expect at Soho Theatre?
We’re Eugénie and Shamira, and we’re She Goat. The company is just the two of us, and we write, direct, compose and then perform in all of our shows, at times with the help of some amazing collaborators whom we think of as She Goat family. We formed She Goat about a decade ago, after meeting as part of another company, Little Bulb, which Shamira co-founded in 2008. Since the start, people have mixed us up, despite the fact that Eugénie is French and Shamira is English, and we don’t think we look the same! But this was what motivated us to make a show about this experience of being mistaken for each other, and that’s how our first show DoppelDänger was born. Now, we’re about to premiere Iron Fantasy, which we describe as ‘a sweaty show with songs asking what does it mean to feel strong?’.
Iron Fantasy started as an idea a few years ago, when we began wondering why we were finding it so hard to assert ourselves and say no. When had we absorbed the message that we needed to shrink ourselves, be unthreatening, be peacemakers, and that we were less physically strong than others? So we went on a quest to find out what our version of strong could be, and this led us to take up weightlifting, eat lots of protein, and see where that would take us. Meanwhile, the journey of making the show was overlapping with living, growing up and growing older, so that’s also something that ended up reflected in the show.
Audiences at Soho Theatre can expect to see us run around and exert ourselves in a way that is hopefully entertaining and show ourselves being vulnerable (and getting out of our comfort zone) but trying hard nevertheless. There will be lots of live music we made using flute, Autoharp and an electronic device called Push, as well as haunting harmonies, medieval-inspired covers of gym anthems, makeshift armour made of kitchen implements, luscious felt costumes, and heartfelt emotions alongside goofy comedy.
Iron Fantasy draws inspiration from 1990s medieval aesthetics, where did the appeal for that visual and thematic world first come from?
Xena Warrior Princess! A show from the 90s that is set in a sort of combo of Ancient Greece, New Zealand and Europe in the Middle Ages. It was on TV when we were growing up, and we went back to watching for inspiration. Xena and her acolyte Gabrielle have this amazing relationship throughout the episodes, and each in their own way, they’re independent, fearless and strong. The mock medieval world they live in appealed to us because its aesthetic is both familiar and removed. It suggests a fantasy world where the weather is always clement, the armour is always protective, youth, strength and friendship always endure. We also found it a really fun musical challenge to put the dance anthems we were hearing at the gym through the filter of a pop culture version of the Middle Ages, and two of the instruments we have in our toolkit, the Autoharp and the flute, lend themselves very well to the sonic world that was emerging.
The show explores ideas of strength through music, movement and performance. How did you begin shaping those ideas into a live theatre experience?
Our starting point when we make work is always to think about what it will be like for it to be performed live to an audience. In this regard, every decision we make is informed by how it will be shared, and, importantly, how it will fit with the rest of the material we’ve devised. For example, we might write a song that we then re-work and edit so that it becomes a scene, and this will inform what parts of the song, what lyrics, what structure, we will keep, which would have been different had the song only existed as a recording. We start by making bits of material in answer to some questions we have, we play around, and after a while, we see what themes, ideas, atmospheres have emerged and how we can combine and structure them into a coherent piece of performance that takes the audience on an exciting journey.
You spent several years weightlifting and training with a fight choreographer as part of the process. How did that physical training influence the way the show developed?
This is a misconception! We worked with a fight choreographer for three afternoons, to explore how we could playfully stage the kind of fantasy fights we imagine the Xena-like versions of ourselves would embark on.
We have been lifting weights under the guidance of a personal trainer for the past two years. We see him once a fortnight if we can, and in the meantime, we do our best to fit in a few home workouts with dumbbells or in whichever local community gym we can find when we’re on tour with other projects. This has changed the way we understand and relate to ourselves: we started eating differently and a lot more, became bigger, but we also discovered we could push ourselves in ways we didn’t think we’d be able to. There is something really exhilarating about lifting something until you can’t anymore. Also, the sessions with our PT and when we manage to go to the gym together are a real source of joy: we train hard and we’re also having a laugh every time. We get to spend time together, which is always what we’re after!
The project also involved workshops with members of the community. What did those conversations reveal about the shared or unique ideas of strength?
We run a community theatre group with older women and what they said was that, for them, being strong meant resilience and courage. This felt like a type of strength we were familiar with, while in contrast physical strength felt uncomfortable and alien. When we asked kids and teens in workshops exploring these questions, they said some inspiring things about courage and resilience too, but the younger kids were primarily vocal about feats of physical strength – they told us that being strong can be “pulling a car with your teeth”. These conversations also revealed what we had read about in some research papers: how ideas about strength can develop very early on in childhood, alongside gender identity. What does it mean to grow up, and to exist, in a world where you are told you are not as physically strong as others?
As actor-musicians, how do music and live performance help express the emotional side of the story, alongside the physicality?
There’s something about all being in a room together, sharing a moment that is only happening there and then, that is very essential and magical in live performance. It’s about being present in the space together, and feeling things on a physical level as well as an intellectual one. Music plays a role in that: it creates atmospheres and emotions that are felt rather than thought about, it means we can express something without telling, or showing, that thing. We find that this allows several different feelings to co-exist in the work and in the space.
The show is described as sweaty, funny and unexpectedly tender. How do you find the balance between humour and vulnerability on stage?
It’s about balance, as you say. What journey do we want the audience to go on? How do we look after them? What do we want them to feel, and then perhaps think about, and how do we get there? Can we make something that holds several truths at once, and what is the best way of structuring that experience so that the audience come with us on the journey?
We love making goofy, funny shows, but the show is also born out of ourselves and our experience: the goofiness and the tender bits are as true as each other, so the balance is found in being truthful to ourselves and to what the process has led us to make.
What feels most different about the way you think about strength now compared to when you started?
It now feels like it’s something that is also ‘for us’, and not just for other people who are more confident or fitter than us. It also feels like we’re discovering our own version of what being strong means, and that it will also always be changing and in progress. That’s exciting. Oh, and also, lifting suitcases into the overhead compartments without struggling, and without throwing our backs out, feels like a pretty exciting outcome. The main change has been shifting our focus away from what we imagine it looks like to be strong from the outside, and focusing on what our bodies can do and how we feel inside these bodies we have.
What do you hope audiences take away from the show? Is there a message you wish to share or are you expecting unique personal connections to the piece?
We hope audiences leave the show and have conversations about what being strong means to them, conversations with their loved ones, their friends, their children, their parents, their grandparents… We didn’t want to make a show where the performers are obviously fitter or stronger than people in the audience, so we hope that seeing us struggle through the madcap routines we’ve made for ourselves help demystify the idea of strength (mentally, physically, and in other mysterious ways) and make the idea of wanting to get strong approachable and possible for everyone.
Finally, if you could give one piece of advice to aspiring actor-musicians, what would it be?
Keep going. It’s tough at the moment out there, much tougher than when we started, but the world needs your voice.
A huge thank you to Eugénie and Shamira, from She Goat, for sharing their experience as theatre creatives and talking about their new show.
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