butterfly | Loco Klub & VAULT Festival
“A brilliant show full of heart – it’s history that is far from dull and has been smacked through a queer kaleidoscope of charm, dark humour and vibrancy” - The Guardian butterfly was a new production which told the stories five real, forgotten figures from British LGBTQ+ history - ranging from a drag queen aboard a WWII navy vessel to a woman who married fourteen others. Boldly told through monologue, spoken word, dance and gig theatre, butterfly was a confetti-ridden joyride through a queer past, ultimately premiering at VAULT Festival 2020. AS FEATURED IN MSLEXIA, THE GUARDIAN & DIVA MAGAZINE. [Production Photography: Harry Plowden]
REVIEWS
“A brilliant show full of heart – it’s history that is far from dull and has been smacked through a queer kaleidoscope of charm, dark humour and vibrancy” - The Guardian
“A queer anthology which sizzles with an electric energy” - VAULT Emerging Critics
“As hilarious as it is heart-warming. A whirlwind joyride of LGBTQI history… that will have you walking back into the right here and now with a big smile on your face and a deeper connection to our shared history.” - DIVA Magazine
⭑⭑⭑⭑ The Crumb
⭑⭑⭑⭑ VAULT Emerging Critics
DIVA Magazine’s Top Eight VAULT Festival Shows [2020]
Starting our process in early 2019, we were lucky enough to have a work-in-progress sharing at the Loco Klub (Bristol), an underground network of brick-lined tunnels beneath Temple Meads Station, in mid-March that year. Bedlam Chorus (the company butterfly was produced under) is all about bringing together creatives in unusual or innovative combinations - poets and filmmakers and dancers and models and writers and occasionally even actors. With a crack team of creatives, we curated a semi-devised process, working from original archival research and oral histories. In this initial WIP sharing, we initially had eight stories all rammed into a 90-minute implosion of glitter and soil and sub-bass.
With a London run impending and a newly-doubled glitter budget, we then set about developing and streamlining the work. New archives were ransacked! New stories were added! (Some stories were also let go. Turns out there’s too much LGBTQ+ history to fit into a 55-minute run time. Who knew.) We worked with our VAULT cast to create something which took lessons from our WIP sharing, but which was also fresh and new and exciting in its own right - not just a reheated version of something we’d made before. Working towards this London run, we were lucky enough to receive official support from UK LGBT+ History Month. We also got featured in DIVA Magazine, Mslexia and The Guardian.
Off the back of our VAULT Festival performances, Sam Arbor (co-writer & director) and I were invited to deliver a seminar at the London Metropolitan Archives, exploring how we used archives in the process of making butterfly, as both creatives and as LGBTQ+ historians. I later spoke about butterfly on a panel at the inaugural OUTing The Past Virtual Symposium, alongside Emeritus Professor Sue Sanders.
