POPFest featured a premiere of Silvia’s experimental performance – The ShopLifter’s Monologue.
It was a 9min piece developed from her PhD research undertaken in a scholarship in the POP research.
Silvia has been researching histories of women’s shoplifting from department stores, at the turn of the 20th century, as feminist acts of citizenship. She examines the role that the clothes that shoplifters wore or might have worn, played or might have played in their theft. Her PhD, which she successfully defended in her viva only a week before POPFest, was called “The Shoplifter’s Clothes: Technologies for a Feminist Practice”.
This creative work was developed during her research and we were very pleased that she performed a short part of it for POPFest.
The piece featured 3 performers: Silvia delivered the primary spoken word piece, George (POP RA) performed the stage directions and Talitha brought some of the actions to life.
The shoplifter sits cross-legged on a well-worn paisley armchair. Her hair is pulled up in a chignon. She’s barefoot and wears a voluminous, long-sleeved taffeta dress.
It is the same colour of the stage’s floorboards.
The bottom of her dress is pulled up in her lap. She’s hand-sewing the lining of the skirt to the skirt’s exterior to form a pocket all around it. She’s finishing
Silvia is going to continue to develop this performance and we look forward to the next showing. Well done Silvia!
