WOMANIFESTO: Sacred Satirist Spectacle and The Invention of Betty Grumble

Abstract

Womanifesto is a kaleidoscopic conversion of multiple woman hoods into a singular performance based entity, Betty Grumble. My research poesies tracks the cacophony of my theoretical and conceptual evidence and inspiration as I ask the central question of: How I might go from Shaman to Showoman?

Addressing women, sexuality, power and violence my work womanifests through two bodies; the private body of Emma Maye and the public body of Betty Grumble. Betty Grumble is my performative avatar, surreal showgirl, obscene beauty queen and sex clown. She is the canvas for my practice-based research as I inhabit and explode the genres of burlesque and cabaret, performance art and drag. I aim to locate her ethos within feminist performance histories, by mapping her experimentation with and exploration of, her own corporeality.

Betty Grumble perforates the boundaries of hetero-normativity’s matrix by displaying her other body through a grotesque and abject burlesquing of the status quo and the expectations and assumptions it demands of and projects onto the body of woman.

By using Betty Grumble as a transmitter of facts, stories and experiences I conceptually Frankenstein her by deconstructing and reassembling the parts that make up her extraordinary avatar whole. My research unpacks her as showoman/shawoman and feminist/sex clown. This text frames my practice as a type of Trojan horse; smuggling corrosive content into a myriad of performative landscapes that critically links the exploitation of the Earth to the exploitation of the woman body. I prescribe sacred satire as a healing balm for the societal body. Betty Grumble is the voice rattling the bars of conformity’s cage. Her refusal to be second and by love fucking with anger Bett pushes back against a capitalist consumption of not only her woman body but also the whole Earth.