Resusci Anne and The Public Displays of Affection drags up the lore surrounding Resusci Anne, an unidentified drowned woman & ‘most beautiful dead girl’ whose face was used to create the first CPR training dummies.The show explores the implications of perceiving dead women as beautiful and centers on femme bodies, mental health and grief. It finds Holly and Raina as they search for their drowned friend in the “club of dead women”, unsure how they arrived there and desperate for a resolution. Haunted by famous dead women: Ophelia, Lizzie Siddal, Joan of Arc, and Elizabeth Taylor, the show uses pop-culture symbolism to resuscitate the memory and truth of their best friend’s death. Resusci Anne and the Public Displays of Affection swims the line of poetry, gig-theatre, folk-tale, sea-shanty and long form spoken word. Beware the vague and wet graffiti. Beware the loss threatening to fall on your head!
Age Guidance: 15+
PRAISE FOR PREVIOUS WORK:
Praise for MANIC, previous work by Raina Greifer
Bath Fringe Review, 4 stars, "ridiculousness and intensity, energy and stillness in equal measure.”
Confessions Of A 5ft2 Actress, 4 stars, "A challenging and multifaceted show with a figure of raw talent at its heart."
Praise for Poetry, previous works by Holly Moberley
“There’s a spark in these poems, a fierce kind of energy.” Tim Liardet, writer of The World Before Snow.
“Holly’s language and imagery dance off the page, before taking a darker turn. It’s powerfully visceral and poetic writing.” Nathan Filer, writer of the Costa Prize winning novel The Shock of the Fall.
Bristol’s LYRA 2021 Slam Champion.
Cast & Creative Team:
writer and performer: RAINA GREIFER
writer and performer: HOLLY MOBERLEY
musician: GAEL SHOWLER
About the Artist:
Our company includes Holly Moberley, Raina Greifer, and Gael Showler.
Holly Moberley is a poet interested in character; how women & queer people wear character in an era that is defined by fame & our fascination with making the self into a myth. Holly is Bristol's 2021 LYRA Slam Champion was shortlisted for the Janklow & Nesbit Novel Prize in 2022, She has been published in Bi+Lines, fourteenpoems, The North & Popshot Quarterly.
Raina Greifer is a theatre maker and performer, interested in the intersection between the personal and political. Their work tends to look at trauma informed sex positivity, and confronts representations of desire in pop culture. Raina’s show MANIC won Best Solo Show at FUSE International 2022 and has toured nationally to venues like Theatre Royal Plymouth, Tobacco Factory Theatre and Camden People's Theatre.
Gael Showler is a musician from the Bristol-based band JuJu and will be working with Holly and Raina to develop original sea shanty music for the show.
Our team is a multidisciplinary collection of queer artists whose aim is to set a match under the patriarchal belly of our history.
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discussion of suicide, death, mental illness, violence, and sexual assault