A Very Serious Performance Lecture
Theatre goofs make a brutally honest lecture about arts funding, but it’s funny and there’s free French cheese.
Created as a one off experiment at Camden People’s Theatre.
But then we performed it again at the Roundhouse.
The low-down…
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We are Shamira and Eugénie, and together we are the experimental performance-making duo She Goat. Nice to meet you!
We have been finding ways to make work together since 2014.
​The ways we knew started breaking down: we couldn’t rest, we couldn’t pay ourselves.
We couldn’t see how to keep going as artists, but we couldn’t imagine stopping making art together.
This performance lecture tells the story of a year investigating how to do things differently.
As self-producing artists, we set out to reimagine our working system with the help of *experts* and *research* into fundraising, access needs, and expanding where we work and who we work with.
We set out to imagine a new future for She Goat. Yet, we quickly realised that everyone’s futures are tangled up together…
With Powerpoint, power suits, and powerful honesty, we share what we found out, what needs to change, and what this could mean for you.
Expect: hot takes, pie charts, us trying our best.
Don’t expect: change to happen without you getting involved.
Also featuring: loads of free camembert cheese.
The background
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In 2021, She Goat received a ‘Develop Your Creative Practice’ grant from the Arts Council England. We set out to reimagine our working system through research into fundraising, access needs, and expanding where we work and who we work with.
We hadn’t planned on all that turning into a lecture, but it felt like the next needed step - to share what we’d learned, make something, and expand our (ahem) network.
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A Very Serious Performance Lecture “premiered” at Camden People’s Theatre on 1st December 2022, for free (free for you to attend, and we didn’t pay ourselves either, but we did pay the lovely technician Lily. Look, here’s the old Eventbrite invite we set up.
Then the Roundhouse called. They wanted the lecture for their FUTURES SEASON 2023 - imagining the future of art(ists). So on 17th March 2023, we got to do it again - with updated stats, more chocolate coins, more cheese boards, and for more people! ​
Afterwards we hosted a Long Table discussion (a discussion all around a long table) to imagine possible futures for artists and art making.
This Long Table was to honour and follow the model conceived by Lois Weaver of Split Britches and inspired by Marleen Gorris’ film Antonia’s Line, in which the protagonist continually extends her dinner table to accommodate a growing community of outsiders and eccentrics, until finally, the table must be moved out of doors.
The Long Table is a dinner party structured by etiquette, where conversation is the only course. (Wahay!)
The question on the table:
‘How can we reimagine relationships between creative freelancers and organisations, in a way that supports making and sharing?’
There was a long table covered in a paper tablecloth with loads of marker pens. Colourful lights lit up the stone walls. We had a big ole sprawling chat.
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