If Jean Genet was alive today

“Slowly but surely I want to strip her of every kind of happiness so as to make a saint of her” – Jean Genet, Our Lady of the Flowers

In a couple of weeks’ time, Joseph Mercier and his company PanicLab present their latest work Of Saints And Go-Go Boys in London for three nights at Toynbee Studios [28 Commercial Street London E1 6AB]. Commissioned for Homotopia’s tenth anniversary and premiered at Liverpool’s Unity Theatre last November, Of Saints And Go-Go Boys is an uncompromising and erotically-charged descent into a world of misfits and sinners.

In a hedonistic world decorated with cheap glamour, three outcasts search for a different kind of sainthood through glorious self-destruction. The performance investigates party culture and as in Jean Genet’s novel Our Lady of the Flowers honours the abject, the shocking, and the profane. An intimate studio space transformed into a small flat welcomes the audience, where they are free to navigate as they wish.

Says director Joseph Mercier, who trained at the School of Alberta Ballet: “I’m interested in how Genet lived, and his refusal to accept normality and mainstream frameworks for pleasure. With Genet, being a ‘bad boy’ was a religious calling. So I wondered how Genet would comment on modern queer life, and what it might mean to live like Genet today.”

PanicLab is a company started by producer Clara Giraud and Joseph Mercier in 2008 to produce and create projects with a regular company of collaborators, including sound designer Dinah Mullen, lighting designer Ziggy Jacobs and scenographer Rachel Good.

Sounds like it’s not to be missed.

 

17th July 2014 at 8pm
18th July 2014 at 6pm and 8pm
19th July 2014 at 6pm and 8pm

Tickets £12 Book tickets online here or by calling 020 7650 2350 or emailing admin@artsadmin.co.uk
For ages 16+, contains explicit sexual content and nudity. This is a performance for a standing audience – if you use a wheelchair or require a chair, please inform the box office so we can accommodate your needs.

 

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