In true Circus WOW style, the 2018 performance class was pretty fired up about the increasing number of older women facing homelessness and how society can ignore older women when they have past their egg laying years. Under the direction of Fran Curtis, we used chickens as a metaphor to speak out on this issue. We devised our costumes using plastic bags to weave, sew and pin the bags to a large tee shirt; Angela made us shoes to resemble chook feet and Ella made the chicken comb from the fingers from a rubber glove and red stretch fabric. The level of creativity in women coming up with their own designs was exciting.
We used satire, jokes and plenty of Australian idioms to capture our annoyance on the issue. We developed our own characters to reflect our personality and interests and these workshops were a highly creative time for the group. Our chooks carried protest placards, they scratched, walked, plucked and squawked like chooks and even more so when we laid our eggs. This type of performance relied more on our acting abilities, timing and remembering our lines. Some lines included:
“I had a dream last night, of a better world where chickens can cross the road without having their motives questioned”
“No egg will be left living in poverty”
—Gabrielle Quigley