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Bridling: A poignant exploration of women's silence in the shadow of artistic authority
Bridling: A poignant exploration of women's silence in the shadow of artistic authority

Daily Maverick

time8 hours ago

  • Entertainment
  • Daily Maverick

Bridling: A poignant exploration of women's silence in the shadow of artistic authority

Silence and lack of autonomy are the torments at the heart of Bridling, a short story that's now a riveting play debuting at the National Arts Festival in Makhanda this week. The terror of it struck me instantly. Only for a moment, but as the stage lights came up and we witnessed actor Buhle Ngaba on a chair placed on top of a table, facing the audience, her face trapped inside that mask-like contraption, the sense of physical and psychological torment was all too real. My whole body felt it, in fact: the terror of her entrapment causing a kind of constriction, claustrophobia, and panic. Seeing it worn instantly propelled my imagination into the realm of horror, of subjugation, of control, censorship, authoritarian tyranny. It's something akin to that terrible mask used to restrain the captured cannibal, Hannibal Lecter, in Silence of the Lambs, and not at all unlike masks used for silencing women in the television serialisation of The Handmaid's Tale. The scold's bridle, also known as a witch's bridle or gossip's bridle, was a regular instrument of torture, subjugation and restraint used on women in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. These things are very real, though, displayed in museums around the world, including a number of museums specifically dedicated to showcasing instruments of mediaeval torture. I felt that visceral response to the contraption again when Ngaba removed the hideous thing from her face and began her calm, methodical description of how it functions, its constituent parts including a metal bit that would have been placed inside the wearer's mouth, and its usage as a device for punishing women judged to be too rowdy, outspoken, rambunctious, or simply too gossipy. It was an object not only of humiliation but made to tame and temper its wearer, silence them by making speech impossible. Plus, of course, there was the obvious shame of having this heavy metal object placed like a cage around one's head and face. It seems untenable that such a device would even exist in any civilised reality. And yet these contraptions were once legion, and in fact existed in a dizzying assortment of designs, configurations and degrees of horror. Despite the shock of that initial image of Ngaba caged and silenced, there was a gentleness that followed, assurance from her that she was not in fact gagged, that the scold's bridle she'd had on was a prop. In fact, rather than Ngaba's character having a bit in her mouth so that she cannot speak, she is the play's narrator. It is essentially her story, a monologue that is a coming-to-life of Nadia Davids' award-winning short story, Bridling, about a young, early-in-her-career actress (it could, in some alternate reality, be Ngaba herself) who auditions for a role in a new performance devised by some hotshot theatre director with a penchant for creating work that is disturbing and challenging. Non-theatre In this case, his conceptual piece — the play within the play — is something akin to non-theatre, a work of performance art that will require its cast of 12 (as in the number of disciples who followed Christ around) female performers to enact three-dimensional living facsimiles of notable artworks. Each of the paintings selected for such enactment is of a woman and each is by a male artist. Each of the paintings also alludes in some way to a questionable male gaze. Whether it's because the woman being depicted is nude or scantily clad, or has been subjected to some sort of violence, what's evoked is a sense of their having been objectified, victimised, brutalised, captured, trapped or imprisoned by the picture's frame — and, presumably, by the artist responsible. In Bridling, as much as we follow the Narrator's story, we are also witness to a case study of men whose authority resides in their genius. Specifically, artistic genius. It's represented here by the hypnotic dancer and actor Shaun Oelf, who plays a kind of ethereal representation of the rock-star theatre director whose artistic genius grants him some sort of presumed permission to exercise control and power over the women in his cast, effectively his harem of performers. From their nerves and anxiety leading up to their audition for him, through to the last emotionally shattering straw of the show they're cast in and for which they're asked to give up their autonomy, we witness a complex power game play out, hearing the consequences — emotional, psychological and metaphysical – for the women involved from Ngaba's Narrator. There are physical consequences, too. Not only are there viscerally punishing acts such as wearing that terrifying scold's bridle, but each of the women performing the play-within-the-play must effectively submit to acts of self-torture in order to satisfy the artistic ambitions of their director. Because, in order to make his lofty work a reality, each of the tableaux will require the women featured in them to remain absolutely still and silent for the five-hour duration of each performance. The director refers to it as 'durational performance art'. Herein, he tells them again and again, lies the crux of the piece: its political significance, in other words, is the pain they must endure as they render themselves motionless, silent, and in a sense, absent. Anyone who has ever attempted to sit dead still for, say, an hour of meditation will know the kind of intense suffering that's expected from the women actors that Bridling talks about. We learn of this suffering from the descriptions in Ngaba's monologue, hear how women begin to drop out of the show because of the physical torment and mental anguish it causes. Of course it is unbearable. But, as an aspiring actor, as someone who wishes to please her (male) director, the Narrator sticks it out, is determined to push herself beyond reasonable limits. Charming and entertaining This might sound like a formula for a show that's very grim, perhaps too dark and shadowy, too lugubrious and menacing. And yet while those elements are all there, the playmaking brings just the right degree of buoyancy and lightness to ensure that — in spite of all the creepiness and under-the-surface horror — it's charming and entertaining, too. It is a fabulous play, in fact, so delicately and powerfully directed by Jay Pather who has imbued it with rich imagery, incredible dancing and such beautiful theatricality. It lifts you up, nourishes you, and it does so without allowing the weight and depth of the traumas it reveals to bring you down. And it is also a mirror on itself, a play about the act of making a play. Davids has stated that one of the themes in the story is that of agency, and another is 'co-opted feminism'. A brutal realisation is that we in the audience are witness to some of the ways in which the art world itself can be — and often is — a place where women's voices are silenced, where their cooperation is demanded at the expense of their own agency, where they become part of the toolkit for someone else's power and fame and celebrity. Davids herself worked in theatre for at least 20 years and came to recognise some of the contradictions within that world, a place that can be so liberating and represent such freedom and outspokenness, and yet which — like most things — has a shadow side, a darker aspect. In this theatrical evocation of the story, that darkness or shadow is brought to life not only by such startling images as seeing Ngaba wearing the scold's bridle, but by Oelf's whimsical representation of the theatre director who is accorded such power and whose ego borders on the satirical. There is a lightness, not only in the manner with which this mesmerising dancer floats so lightly and imperceptibly about the stage, hops onto tables and moves insect-like, birdlike, spirit-like from one position to the next, but also in a kind of breezy parodying of his character, whose menace is cleverly undercut by a ridiculous blonde wig, an exaggerated paunch and by both Oelf's subtle comedy and his inescapable humanity. As Ngaba's Narrator recalls the sequence of events surrounding the show, Oelf's narcissistic director dances in order to evoke an array of emotions, outbursts, reactions, admonitions and postures of self-importance. At some point, though, he is unmasked, has the physical trappings of his rock-star persona stripped away as Ngaba pulls off his pants, snatches away his fat suit and disappears the wig. Near-naked, he stands before us, simply another human. There's a sweetness in this, an unmasking or bearing of innocence, as though what's revealed visually is the deconstruction of identity and of power, how we humans accumulate the trappings of who we are, wear them like a kind of armour, costume, or mask. For the Narrator, however, there is a kind of Stockholm syndrome inability to escape the trap that is her role in this genius director's morbidly inactive, silent non-play. She has chosen to be in this harrowing performance and now it has become her fate, her prison. Gut-wrenching and profound There's a gut-wrenching and profound moment in which Ngaba, who is so wholeheartedly immersed in her character, who is an actor, wakes as if from a dream and calls out: 'Line, line, line…' And, for a brief moment, you suspect that the entire thing has become unhinged, the thread snapped, the train of thought broken, that this wonderful actor who has kept her cool through this very long and difficult monologue has forgotten her words and requires a cue from the stage manager. But of course she is still completely in character. Her character has been consumed by the nightmare of the role she must perform, again and again. She is begging the universe, or God, or anyone who might be listening, to give her a line to speak, to give her something to do — anything that will help her escape the silence and non-action of her performance in this director/dictator's cruel production. In that moment, my heart broke. It was a reminder that the pernicious silencing and censoring and subjugation of women does not and never has required something physical, such as a scold's bridle, to be enforced. We have to simply step into a gallery or look around the world to see who holds most of the power. The evidence is everywhere, even in theatres, where one imagines that freedom is being performed. What Bridling does with such force and such poetry is give a voice to those who have, throughout history, endured countless mechanisms of silence. DM

Notorious serial killer turns 72 today with birthday wish unfulfilled
Notorious serial killer turns 72 today with birthday wish unfulfilled

Daily Mirror

time7 days ago

  • Daily Mirror

Notorious serial killer turns 72 today with birthday wish unfulfilled

Robert Maudsley, the quadruple killer dubbed 'Hannibal the Cannibal', turns 72 today amid growing concerns about his health and in dispute with prison authorities Britain's longest serving prisoner is spending his most miserable birthday behind bars today - the 51st consecutive one alone in his cell. Robert Maudsley, the quadruple killer dubbed 'Hannibal the Cannibal', turned 72 amid growing concerns about his health following a hunger strike. It is his 51st consecutive birthday in prison. But it is his first in Whitemoor, Cambridgeshire after decades in Wakefield jail. He asked to move back to the glass cage where he was held in the jail dubbed 'Monster Mansion'. ‌ Maudsley has spent almost 47 years in a single cell. It now equates to more than 17,000 consecutive days in solitary confinement. His request to return to Wakefield has so far been denied, and it is difficult for his family to visit from his native Merseyside. He has told girlfriend, Londoner Loveinia MacKenney, 69, not to visit, though she sent him a card with £300 in cash for a present. ‌ Once identified as the most dangerous inmate in the country, Maudsley was moved from his perspex box in Wakefield jail after a row over his privileges, and went on hunger strike earlier this year. He was moved to Whitemoor on April 8. In recent correspondence with Loveinia, he outlined why he went on hunger strike earlier this year. He told how his Playstation and some of his 'perks' were taken away. He told her: "Sometimes Loveinia we do have to fight for what is right and we believe in." Said to have a high IQ, Maudsley had enjoyed reading and listening to classical music in Wakefield, where his previous crimes led to him being nicknamed 'Hannibal the Cannibal'. But his TV and radio were removed in the row with prison staff. Maudsley became the UK's longest serving prisoner after the death of Moors murderer Ian Brady, who served 51 years, in 2017. ‌ He was first locked up for manslaughter when he was 21 in 1974. On July 28, 1978, already serving life, Maudsley killed two fellow prisoners in Wakefield jail. He was said to have told a prison guard: 'There'll be two short on the roll call.' He had already killed a fellow patient in Broadmoor secure hospital, in 1974. The victim there was found with a plastic spoon blade in his ear. ‌ That led to Maudsley's nicknames, first 'Spoons', then Hannibal the Cannibal, amid claims that he had eaten his brain. Post mortem examination made clear that was not the case. But the nickname stuck. Special provision was made for him inside Wakefield. His 'glass cage' was compared to one used to house the fictional character Dr Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins. He was on screen for a matter of. minutes, but it won him an Oscar for the 1991 film 'Silence of the Lambs'. The Prison Service declined to comment on individual prisoners. In the past, they have stressed that no prisoners are kept in solitary confinement in the UK penal system.

Viktor Gyokeres preference clear as Man Utd and Arsenal bid to resolve saga
Viktor Gyokeres preference clear as Man Utd and Arsenal bid to resolve saga

Daily Mirror

time13-06-2025

  • Entertainment
  • Daily Mirror

Viktor Gyokeres preference clear as Man Utd and Arsenal bid to resolve saga

Viktor Gyokeres is wanted by Manchester United and Arsenal, after scoring 102 goals in 97 games for Sporting Lisbon, with a move to the Premier League on the cards this summer Ruben Amorim knew it was only a matter of time before Viktor Gyokeres took the next step in his career and moved on to bigger and better things. When he was leaving Sporting Lisbon to take over at Manchester United back in November, Amorim was asked if he intended to take prolific goalscorer Gyokeres with him. ‌ 'If I start joking about this Gyokeres situation, I'll get in trouble,' said Amorim. 'This is my city, this is my country, so I'll respect it. Viktor has to stay until the end of the season and then his life will probably go somewhere else.' ‌ Having seen out last season with Sporting where he plundered a phenomenal haul of 54 goals in 52 games in all competitions, Gyokeres is now ready to move on. Gyokeres is good friends with fellow goal machine, Manchester City striker Erling Haaland, and could soon be rivalling him – and Liverpool's Mo Salah – for the crown of the Premier League's top scorer. United is the logical destination for him, where he would be reunited with former boss Amorim, but Arsenal are also determined to land the 27-year-old Sweden star. Gyokeres has enjoyed a meteoric rise, from being let go by Brighton, to a spell at Coventry, then to Sporting and now on the brink of a mega-money move to the Premier League. It was at Coventry where Gyokeres first came up with his unique goal celebration, one which sees him cross both hands over his mouth, to form a mask. Debate has raged over the meaning of the celebration, with former Coventry team-mate Josh Eccles suggesting it is a nod to the character Hannibal Lecter in the film Silence of the Lambs. "He [Hannibal Lecter] eats people and Viktor destroys defences," said Eccles. ‌ Others believe the celebration was inspired by the masked villain Bane, from the Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises. What is certain is that Gyokeres has been feasting on defences in Portugal and all over Europe since joining Sporting and has proved as deadly as Bane and Hannibal Lecter. A remarkable haul of 97 goals from 102 appearances in two seasons at Sporting has seen Gyokeres become a target for United and Arsenal, who will go head-to-head for him. ‌ Gyokeres served notice of his ability to terrorise Premier League sides in the Champions League last season, with a stunning hat-trick in a 4-1 win for Sporting over Pep Guardiola's City. As well as averaging more than one goal a game last season, Gyokeres has also scored nine in just six appearances for Sweden, underlining his ability to score at any level. Those who know Gyokeres well and have worked with him speak of a player with a relentless work ethic, strong mentality, laser focus and a fierce desire to win. ‌ Having just turned 27, Gyokeres is hitting the peak years of his career, which is why United and Arsenal – both crying out for a proven and prolific goalscorer – want to land him. Having agreed last summer to give Sporting one more season, Gyokeres insists he struck a gentleman's agreement with the club, allowing him to leave for a certain price. Sporting president Frederico Varandas has denied this and is adamant Gyokeres will not be allowed to leave for lower than his release clause of £85million. Reports from Lisbon suggest Gyokeres is willing to go on strike to get the move he wants, a move dismissed by Varandas and the Sporting hierarchy. What seems likely is that the future of Gyokeres will be a protracted saga over the summer, unless United or Arsenal are willing to meet Sporting's valuation. On the evidence of his phenomenal form of the last two seasons, Gyokeres would appear to be worth it.

Scottish inmates able to watch hit TV show Prison Break
Scottish inmates able to watch hit TV show Prison Break

Glasgow Times

time02-06-2025

  • Glasgow Times

Scottish inmates able to watch hit TV show Prison Break

Prisoners are permitted to rent the 2005 crime drama which details the fictional story of a US jailbreak, as well as titles like Silence of the Lambs and psychological thriller Dexter. Also included in the rentable catalogue is thousands of 18-rated DVDs like Fifty Shades of Grey, Brokeback Mountain and American Pie, according to The Scottish Sun. (Image: Image by Colin Mearns, Newsquest) READ NEXT: Graphic footage emerges of Ross Monaghan gangland shooting The Scottish Conservatives are urging SNP ministers to order jail chiefs to remove the X-rated flicks. Shadow justice secretary Liam Kerr MSP said: 'Ordinary Scots will be appalled that inmates are being provided with X-rated movies by prisons. 'England and Wales banned 18-rated movies and TV shows from their prisons 12 years ago and it is about time that the Scottish Prison Service followed suit. 'Many of the prisoners at Barlinnie will be behind bars for violent crimes, so it is common sense they should not be able to access graphically violent material about serial killers and torturers. 'Prisoners trying to get clean will also not be helped by having access to content that promotes drug use. 'SNP Ministers must intervene and immediately direct the SPS to remove violent or sexual films from our prisons.' (Image: Image of Liam Kerr MSP, PA) A spokesman for the Prison Officers' Association said: 'Given all the factors such as overcrowding, drug use, bullying and organised crime gang activities inside our prisons, the last thing we need is anything else adding to the tension or temperatures. 'It is something that the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) should be reviewing as a priority with a view to limiting the availability of these films.' READ NEXT: Man allegedly threw box of 'drugs' out window of moving car on busy expressway A Scottish Prison Service spokesperson added: 'Access to watching DVDs is a privilege not a right, and is available at the discretion of the Governor."

Scots inmates watching US telly hit Prison Break and other X-rated movies behind bars
Scots inmates watching US telly hit Prison Break and other X-rated movies behind bars

Scottish Sun

time01-06-2025

  • Entertainment
  • Scottish Sun

Scots inmates watching US telly hit Prison Break and other X-rated movies behind bars

Read on to discover some of the other titles available to cons NICK FLICK FIASCO Scots inmates watching US telly hit Prison Break and other X-rated movies behind bars Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) THE Scottish Prison Service has come under fire for allowing inmates to watch X-rated content behind bars. Lags are permitted to rent from a catalogue of thousands of 18-rated DVDs, which include films about serial killers and sex beasts. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 4 Inmates at Glasgow's HMP Barlinnie have been watching X-rated DVDs Credit: Alamy 4 American telly hit Prison Break depicts a complex jailbreak plan Credit: Fox Broadcasting 4 Raunchy flick Fifty Shades of Grey is available to rent Credit: Alamy And cons can even borrow 2005 crime drama Prison Break - which tells, in detail, the fictional story of a US jailbreak. Other titles available include serial killer classic Silence of the Lambs and psychological thriller Dexter - a series about a killer police forensic officer. A source said: 'Some of the depraved crimes this lot have committed could easily be adapted into a Hollywood blockbuster. 'The last thing they need is to be given any twisted ideas - they shouldn't even be allowed TVs in the first place.' Also available for prison movie nights is Fifty Shades of Grey, Brokeback Mountain and American Pie. Lags can also kick back and watch a documentary about real-life child killers Fred and Rose West. But critics have basted the film fiasco and are urging prison bosses to review the rules. A spokesman for the Prison Officers' Association told MailOnline: 'Given all the factors such as overcrowding, drug use, bullying and organised crime gang activities inside our prisons, the last thing we need is anything else adding to the tension or temperatures. 'It is something that the SPS should be reviewing as a priority with a view to limiting the availability of these films.' Elsewhere, the Scottish Conservatives are urging SNP ministers to order jail chiefs to remove the X-rated flicks. Shadow justice secretary Liam Kerr MSP said: 'Ordinary Scots will be appalled that inmates are being provided with X-rated movies by prisons. 'England and Wales banned 18-rated movies and TV shows from their prisons 12 years ago and it is about time that the Scottish Prison Service followed suit. 'Many of the prisoners at Barlinnie will be behind bars for violent crimes, so it is common sense they should not be able to access graphically violent material about serial killers and torturers. 'Prisoners trying to get clean will also not be helped by having access to content that promotes drug use. 4 Scottish Conservaites shadow justice secretary Liam Kerr blasted the SNP Credit: Alamy 'SNP Ministers must intervene and immediately direct the SPS to remove violent or sexual films from our prisons.' A Scottish Prison Service spokesperson added: 'Access to watching DVDs is a privilege not a right, and is available at the discretion of the Governor.'

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