C+NTO
Joelle Taylor
‘We are ferocious women. Climbing out of our skins & leaving them draped like soiled wedding dresses as we fall into each other’s mouths. This is love. Furious love.’
C+NTO is a spoken word theatre show from leading UK poet Joelle Taylor based on her TS Eliot Prize-winning collection C+nto & Othered Poems.
Tracing Joelle’s own experience C+NTO enters the private lives of women from the butch counterculture of the 80s and 90s. It tells the story of their difficult balance between survival and self-expression at a time when reclaiming their bodies as their own was a form of protest.
Listen
A BBC Radio 4 documentary, ‘Butch’, following Joelle’s research and development for this project is available to listen to on BBC Sounds.
History, magic, rebellion, party and sermon vibrate through Joelle’s cantos to uncover these underground communities forged by women. Part-memoir and part-conjecture, C+NTO explores sexuality and gender in poetry that is lyrical, expansive, imagistic, epic and intimate. C+nto is a love poem, a riot, a late night, and an honouring.
C+NTO is currently in development.
“Now that all this lesbian-focused space has receded like the tide before a tsunami it’s time for us to remember our journeys, our bodies, our friendships and how radical an act it was and still is for us to simply be alive.”
Show credits
Writer & Performer: Joelle Taylor
Director: Rob Watt
Producer: Tom MacAndrew
Designer: Bethany Wells
Supported by Apples and Snakes, the Albany & Arts Council England.
R&D Photos credit Suzi Corker
