A tour de force of female rage and vulnerability
Chat Shit, Get Hit. The title itself grabs the attention of the audience: a threat, a rhyme, a direct statement. I was certainly enticed.
We enter into a packed Camden People’s Theatre. The stage is bare, except a microphone and a kettle.
Martha Pailing enters and the audiences whispers slowly dissolve into silence.
This piece is a whistle stop tour through Pailing’s experience of moving back to Blackpool to save money for an “artistic project.” She is working at the same chippy she worked at when she was 15. The clients are asking her why she is back? When is she going off to Uni? She graduated 8 years ago.
It feels like everything is falling apart, and when her boyfriend breaks up with her, it is the final straw. She is angry. She is exhausted. And it is palpable.
Pailing has a natural warmth as a performer, it is undeniable and ensures the audience root for her from the first words she utters. She tackled very difficult subject matters with force and was completely unapologetic about the play’s message, talking openly about feminism, classism and the patriarchy. She spoke with a directness and humour, but buried underneath was extreme pain and sincere empathy.
Pailing blended spoken word poetry, digital media, audience interaction and physical theatre into a cacophonous 45 minute celebration and exploration of female rage. Her anger boiled so much so that she couldn’t communicate it as her human self any longer, and had to embody none other than her pet dog. It was a full circle moment, having mentioned her dog earlier in the piece, and doesn’t seem as out of place as one may think.
Furthermore, Pailing did a sensational job of bringing the audience into her anger. You could feel the uneasiness seeping through the audience as we began to reflect on the fact that life is full of fury and we shouldn’t be as accepting of things we disagree with, especially the female identifying among us.
I left riled, shook up in all the right ways, knowing that maybe it isn’t okay. And maybe I should do something about that, so thank you Martha!