Artist Support Commission 2022 - Frankie Thompson
A bit about the artist…
“I am a queer, neurodivergent and mentally ill clown, performance artist and drag king from London. My work explores the fraught relationship between the body and space, including my ongoing recovery from anorexia and psychosis”
A bit about the work…
Dreamlike multimedia circus, tiny worlds from human rubbish appear and vanish live on stage in a mesmerising journey through space, scale and perspective…
“‘SPACE’ is a one woman multimedia show exploring scale, perspective and size. It is an investigation of my recovery from anorexia where I struggled specifically with scale as a result of chronic dysmorphia, and also an investigation of my relationship with my dyspraxia, a condition which affects my ability to judge distance and my motor coordination in space. Using tiny sets which I have built from hand out of 100% rubbish, I use an HD webcam to project them enormous whilst animating them live on stage in front of an audience. This aims to warp the audience’s sense of scale and space. The piece is narrated by a soundtrack of different scientists and thinkers all discussing theories of space and perspective”
“The botanist’s magnifying glass is youth recaptured. It gives him back the enlarging gaze of a child. With this glass in hand, he returns to the garden, where children see enlarged. Thus the minuscule, a narrow gate, opens up an entire world”
A bit about the development process…
As part of her artist support package, Frankie had mentoring sessions with Thick & Tight, a dance theatre company
“The best thing was working with Thick and Tight… It was really, really, really wonderful. And it was also really nice having them for just two days because they came in and it blew apart, really sort of blew it up, in a really protective way.”
— FRANKIE
“I think what that was, was not even just an investment into the piece. It was an investment into me as an artist and sort of how I move and what my community is”
— FRANKIE
“It was a real investment in my process as well. There was a lot of tools that I can use for my processes ongoing. It was pretty ground-breaking for me in terms of the way of building professionally from the self.”
— FRANKIE
A bit about the performance…
Frankie Thompson performed SPACE at A Bit Of A Do festival on Sunday 23rd October 2023. She performed at The Front Room.
“I haven't done that work in such a long time, of being that person on stage and not clowning. And I think people really had never seen me do that. So it was really different role”
— FRANKIE
“It was really, really special and to perform it in that space was really amazing. It was a really great space for it”
— FRANKIE
