Wendy Houstoun

Five guests of high calibre and low pay attempt the impossible and quite probably fail in this live directed improvisation.

Combining idiocy with skill, anarchy with meaning and costumes with music, the Stupid Women performing in Leeds are all experienced performance artists based in, or with strong links to, Yorkshire – TC Howard, Rachel Krische, Lucy Suggate, Grace Surman and?Sophie Unwin. Moving in and out of the stage, Wendy herself becomes a performing director of the action.

Stupid Women’s live improvisation is based on tasks and ideas coming from both Wendy and the performers – a kind of organised mayhem. It reveals the way performance is made - the impossibility of repetition, the absurdity of the director, the heroism of the performer, the chaos in the brain and the difficulty of making sense of anything at all. It combines as many elements as it can – music, text, movement, props, scenery – all in a very makeshift manner, and based on the skills and personalities of the performers, who differ from venue to venue.