“I feel like Barbie is just this worldwide construction of oppression that makes its way into every girl’s bedroom." - Eve Ensler
A piece created for the Diploma in Physical Theatre Practise, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2015, I was influenced by the idea that we can use the human body to depict that of a doll. I studied isolations and tension points to mimick a Barbie doll, inspired by the text 'Free Barbie' found in Eve Ensler's 'I am an emotional creature'. This text is told entirely from the viewpoint of a young Chinese girl who works in a sweatshop putting the heads on Barbie dolls. The use of Barbie symbolises the potential emotional damage playing with this unrealistic beauty of a doll can inflict upon young girls.
The main focal point that I wanted to base my piece around was that of 'Barbie syndrome'- one's desire to have a physical appearance and lifestyle representative of the Barbie doll. As Ariane Mnouchkine says - “to what extent theatre is not a game of shadows? In its mimicry of action, is not theatre a display or echo of how life works (…) Human beings can become unthinking puppets if they stop paying attention, if their eyes do not, in fact, see. Can we act at all? Are we only acted upon?” This further informed my need to show that I was 'trapped' and being manipulated, either as a Barbie or a member of society in this world – like the narrator of the monologue 'Free Barbie' - trapped in child slave labour. |
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