Growing up in an acting community, theatre became a way for me to expose myself to the shame of being watched. Theatre and shame exist as an antithesis to one another. Whilst shame urges one to retreat, theatre urges one to confront. In situations that assume a risk of humiliation, I get stage fright. This fear transcends into my body of work. It explores an issue associated with the widely seen taboo; mental health, especially the battle of emotional dysregulation. Theatrical traits like paper mâché, peppers ghosts and masks are employed to combat the shame of being vulnerable.
The littered wolf-girl figures stem from last year's work where I vilified the wolf symbol out of anger and in turn am now humanizing by making her awkward. They exist also as amalgamations of important women in my life that have endured personal struggles with mental health. I use these characters as odes to them; to normalize things about them others struggle to accept, to de-stigmatize the issues shamed and ignored in society and to show them they deserve to be accepted and loved, wholly.
