‘All complicit’
How did you kick off Pride Month? Did you watch Mean Girls? Did you tell the office homosexual he looked thin? Did you buy a rainbow flag on Temu? NOT GOOD ENOUGH!
I, on the other hand, whipped (pun intentional) the season into shape, celebrating the end of Queer East Festival with a two-hour durational theatrical experience involving ropes, bondage and audience manipulation. Yes, that’s right – crown me queen of the gays.
Now running for six years, the festival presents an extensive programme mainly of film, but also talks and theatre, covering the Asian LGBTQ+ experience. Producing and highlighting beautiful films, theatre and printed material, this should be on your radar! A perfect antidote to the upcoming white-dominated, corporate version of Pride rammed down our throats (in the bad way).
Dangling from a rope and ring is Daniel Kok: fishnets, trainers, and a pattern of black ropes twining around his bald head, suspending him face downward, legs upwards, hovering mid-skydive. Luke George is more colourful, a rainbow wizard: a pink kimono covering layers of diminishing pants, neon yellow and blue ropes snaking around his chest, back, and upwards over his bald head to create a swinging mane of rope – like Rapunzel, if she was from Berlin. Around them are household objects similarly trussed up: a hoover, a fan, a fire extinguisher, a CD player.
There is no hopping (couldn’t help myself) around the theme – it is simply there. For those living under a rock, or in a nunnery, shibari is a traditional Japanese art of decorative rope bondage, meaning “the act of tying”. The person who is tied is often called the “bunny”, hence the title.
The audience surrounds the action, some vulnerable on beanbags beside the blue square of the stage. Hungry-eyed and dry-lipped, there is clearly a vested interest for many amongst us. But does the piece theatrically explore why people enjoy this fetish?
Well, yes and no. The slowness, the ritualism, and the painstaking knotting and unravelling puts one into an almost meditative state. Audience members are bound and left in various positions. George, in the softest and politest tones, stalks the square, first asking various people to tie and untie his legs and hands, then switching roles. By the end, one young woman is tied onto a pillow with a leg bent upwards; one man is led around by a collar on his neck by a linen-clad, bemused woman; another woman’s hands and arms are clamped in pink wires; and a muscly man is hung from the ceiling sideways, spinning slowly as a finale. We are all watching, all involved, and all complicit in this fascinating and specific subgenre.
Yet – this is an 1893 Victorian town hall turned theatre, not a basement in Dalston. Throughout, music (heavy metal obviously), object work, and dance sequences are used to break up the human macramé, but they don’t go far enough. A soundscape – even of rope friction – or projected interviews about people’s experiences in the community would have explained and explored something that is mainly just depicted. The assumption of prior knowledge and interest leans this more towards performance art than theatre.
At one point, Kok (always asking for consent) takes the spread-eagled woman’s bag and slowly removes everything piece by piece, laying it out on the floor in a snaking line. This encapsulates the show’s appeal: the safe demonstration of the thrill of crossing implicit social boundaries, and the trust you must place in a total stranger – to give up control, to be in someone else’s power, yet still retain your own.
The festival is sadly over, but keep an eye on what’s coming up next year? Click HERE!