POCKETS of POWER is a 20min cabaret show about the remarkable histories of pocket inventions and their inventors from the POP research. These stories are brought to life by award-winning feminist theatre company Scary Little Girls, with Becca Morden, Naomi Paxton as Ada Camp, Nadia Shash, Don One, Koko Brown and Velma VonBonBon. The show features convertible pocket filled costumes, song, dance, spoken word, a giant (glove) puppet and a Q&A.
We’ve performed at Glastonbury (June 2023), AHRC Being Human Festival (Soho, Nov 2023) and the Mayven Festival (Cornwall, Nov 2023)
Why pockets?
Few of us today feel like we’ve got the pockets we deserve – we usually want more, we want better, and we want bigger pockets in more places and in more garments–
This it turns out is not a new feeling.
Pockets, have proved problematic for people and especially women for centuries
The problem of pockets, the paucity of pockets, has catalysed a remarkable plethora of pockets – there are over 25,000 patents just for pockets in our research dataset.
Inventors – many of them women – have been inventing pockets for a very long time and they do far more than you might expect.
- Women have hacked, hidden and hung pockets in unexpected places
- They have put pockets onto and into everything– from socks and stockings, in petticoats and inside skirts, in bustles, on bloomers and corsets, inside sleeves and scarves, in gloves and garters, under cuffs, and even in hats
So, while men’s pockets tend to be in stable, conventional and on display to showcase wealth, capacity and power – women’s can be literally anywhere and often everywhere….. and they’re mostly secret, concealed, multiple or masquerading as something else.
The POWER OF POCKETS sets out to share insights into the many places, positions, and purposes of a plethora of pockets.
We hope audiences get inspired to add more, make more or demand more and better pockets.
