If you are in London this month then may want to head to Soho Theatre Upstairs from the 10th to the 21st March to see the show Iron Fantasy. The show is inspired by the nineties fantasy television shows and medieval times. I spoke to Shamira Turner and Eugénie Pastorto find out all about it.
Hello! Tell us about yourself ?
Hello! We are She Goat, we’re a performance company who makes goofy, funny and tender theatre shows with live music. We have been working together as She Goat for a decade, and we met as part of another theatre company called Little Bulb, which Shamira co-founded in 2008. Eugénie is French and Shamira is English, yet somehow people have been mixing us up since the very start.Our
first show, DoppelDänger, was about this and it took the form of a Baroque-pop live concept album. We’ve been in each other’s lives in big and small ways since we met, and that inspired our second show, The Undefinable, which was set as a late-night radio event with integrated audio-description. Now, we’re about to premiere our brand-new show Iron Fantasy, which first emerged as a hint of an idea four years ago.
Together, we play multiple instruments, including Autoharp, flute, and an electronic music-making device called Push.
Tell us a bit about Iron Fantasy
It all started with us becoming interested in why we were finding it so difficult to assert ourselves. We asked older women, children and teens what being strong meant to them, and hearing their answers we started to see that what the two of us were particularly interested in was physical strength: muscles, taking up space, getting bigger, because this was not something we were familiar, or even comfortable, with.We
We then asked ourselves when we got the idea that we needed to be smaller, quieter, helpful, peacemakers; and when we stopped trusting our bodies. Roughly two years ago, we started working with a personal trainer who put us through our paces. This has changed the way we understand and relate to ourselves: we ate 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.
In the show, we move between different versions of ourselves: at one end of the spectrum, there are what we call the Idiots, happy-go-lucky cartoonish keen beans who love Xena Warrior Princess and are on a mission to find out how to be strong and share it with the audience. At the other end of the spectrum, there are versions of Eugénie and Shamira, who might be talking as ‘ourselves’, which hopefully also allows the audience in.
There is lots of music in the show, and the audience can expect weird medieval inspired covers of pop songs and gym anthems, our own compositions, 90s TV vibes and haunting harmonies.
We wanted to make a show that takes in the clueless, awkward P.E.-at-school feelings of being at odds with your body, and say what if… to rewrite that story, mixing the body’s real aches and crakes and memories with the kind of fantasy world that can happen in theatre, with lights, music and gladiatorial costumes, to experiment with how the act of doing might change your understanding of who you are.
How are rehearsals going?
They’re going well! But there’s always more to do than we initially thought. We’ve been rehearsing in several different places over the past few weeks, and sometimes we get all the instruments and equipment out of the box and set up in the room and then we spend the day at our laptops tweaking the script… but you have to go with the flow and what the show needs!
We’re quite ambitious (delusional?) in how much we’re able to multi-task on stage, which means we can spend ages working on a section of the show that ends up being only two minutes of material. We love working together though so it’s also a privilege and a delight to be able to spend time in this way.
What can you tell us about the set?
The set is pretty minimal: making and now rehearsing the show, we’ve had to be light of foot as we have worked in a variety of places, including on mainland Europe for some development periods. The show is pretty much a two-person affair, so the set is essentially our instruments and costumes, whatever we’re able to carry with us in a big suitcase. We also use two chairs and two tables that the theatre lends us, and there are two microphones on stands with their long coiling leads.
The costumes are pretty fun: some are made of metal kitchen implements tied together with colourful shoelaces, and some are like a soft, dream-like version of a gladiatorial armour made of grey, pink and yellow felt. We worked with our costume collaborator Sarah Munro to create these fantasy outfits. She is incredible, making everything by hand and sourcing all the materials second-hand. We like that every bit costume is getting a second chance. When they’re not worn, they live in gym bags: I guess those and our musical instruments are the set.
Tell us a little bit about the cast
The cast is yours truly: Shamira and Eugénie – no surprise cameos I’m afraid. We’re also the writers, directors and composers of the show. In this regard, the performing of the show is linked to the making of the show: it’s about our own journey exploring what it means to feel strong, and we’re the ones on stage reporting back to the audience.
What is the most challenging thing about doing Iron Fantasy?
Not having yet done Iron Fantasy?! I think we’ll feel a lot better once we have a few performances of it under our belt! We’ve only ever shown a 20-minute work-in-progress of Iron Fantasy, otherwise it’s just been between the two of us. The most challenging thing about doing the show will probably be remembering all the complicated choreography that past us have made for present us…!
The best thing about Iron Fantasy?
Getting to make each other laugh through the making process. Also: pushing ourselves to make the artwork we most needed to make, even the bits that scare us.
What is the best reaction you have ever had from an audience member?
When we shared a work-in-progress of Iron Fantasy as part of a small festival in Luxembourg, one of the other artists who’d been performing that day in a really cool band that was doing covers of Abba songs with African instruments, slowly got to his feet in the curtain call and bowed to us. He was dressed like royalty and looked incredibly elegant and classy. We by contrast were dishevelled and sweaty, in our P.E. kits, and we felt very honoured.
If people want to follow you on social media where can they find you?
We’re on Instagram: @shegoatx. Come say hello!
Finally in three words why should people come to see Iron Fantasy?
Funny, sweaty, tender.
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