Seven Petticoats

Seven Petticoats is a solo debut from Judita Vivas, devised in response to the life and work of Mary Wollstonecraft – late eighteenth century British thinker, writer, pioneering feminist, radical and author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

While not a historically accurate account, the show artistically draws on some real aspects of Mary’s life: her suicide attempt at Putney Bridge; love of storms; maverick nature; attempts to fit in and continuous failure to do so; sugar cravings; heart-breaking affair with Gilbert Imlay; and her being a Grandmother of Frankenstein (written by her daughter Mary Shelley).

During the course of an hour, we see a woman - maybe Mary, maybe someone from today - hurl herself into the waters of the river Thames, and as she sinks, descend to a more fluid understanding of womanhood. Slowly sinking, she is haunted by vision of Mary, Eve, Ishtar and others. The looming presence of The Countess towers over her. Somewhere a Lithuanian servant flits in and out tidying things. She gradually removes all her petticoats, prepares to enter the seventh gate, the underworld, and meet herself. The performance poetically grapples with the idea that a strong and inspirational woman, like Wollstonecraft, exists in-between the iconic figure and the marginalized loner living on the edge of rationality and society.

The performance combines physical intensity and elegance, a cyberpunk aesthetic, humour and tragedy, quirky character work and sweeping cinematic romanticism, in order to embody the lives of multiple women – real, surreal, mythical, historical and imaginary – and focus on a universal idea of a vindication of the right to be a woman that is never fully achieved...