SO LA FLAIR: CREATIVE COLLECTIVE

Tell us about yourself?

Lucy: I’m an emerging artist and i’ve just started working with Walk the Plank, who are an arts organisation based in Salford. I’m also one of the co-founders and artistic directors of So La Flair.

PJ: I’m the creative producer of So La Flair. I’ve just graduated from studying Drama and Film at the University of Manchester and I am a multi-disciplinary artist and a Marketer Extraordinaire who is currently fun-employed!

How would you describe So La Flair?

Lucy: So La Flair was born out of an unhappiness with the arts industry on a personal and practical level but also on a wider political, conceptual level. I had done a lot of research on the economics of theatre and the feminist theatre movement in the ‘70s, and that is the groundwork for a lot of what we do now and has influenced the of building So La Flair. We’re trying to create a company that could enact the radical structural change we want to see and reimagine how theatre and the arts can be run. Also the lack of creative spaces and communities after lockdown, meant we needed to create our own platform.

PJ: We just had our first anniversary in August and it has been the craziest first year as a collective, from a showcase in March to the Edinburgh Fringe festival, it’s been mental! Our first show at the Fringe was called ‘How to keep up with the Kardashians’ which looks at women’s and non-binary people’s relationship with their bodies and is based on interviews with about 50 people from the ages of 5 - 60. It’s a cabaret campaign against ‘keep up’ culture and looks into the Kardashians and the effects that media can have on our body.

Can you elaborate on your unhappiness with the arts industry?

Lucy: It’s elitist, so unless you have a lot of money, it’s really hard to get your foot in the door. Trying to afford to make your dream happen whilst also feeding yourself is hard and that is a challenge that we are constantly trying to not let beat us. Edinburgh is a great example of this, it costs so much money! We had spent two years raising funds through our own events and ticket sales to get there but it turned out to be pretty hard to get any attention unless you’ve paid however-many grand for a marketing package.

All in all, how was your experience at the Fringe and would you do it again?

PJ: Absolutely. It was mental and, although there is obviously frustrations towards shows with bigger budgets getting more reviews, there were so many beautiful moments. There was a movement this summer called ‘Femi-fringe’, where the amount of female artists was criticised by people saying ‘it’s no longer Edinburgh Fringe, now it’s Femi-fringe!’. So female theatre companies then reclaimed the hashtag on twitter. We caught wind of the movement and hosted an impromptu open-mic night where we met so many incredible artists and made some amazing connections.

Lucy: PJ organised the whole thing and it was an incredible, revolutionary meeting of creative young women and non-binary people.

PJ: The bittersweet thing about loving theatre is you meet the most amazing creatives with similar morals, energy and ethics even though the funding part is so tough.

Lucy: You could say it’s… ‘brutiful’!

PJ: We learnt so much and met amazing people and the most beautiful thing about taking the show to the Fringe was that each individual audience reaction was so stunning. On our Instagram we get sent so many long, well thought out messages from individual audience members and I think that was so much more valuable than reviews because the show looks at such personal things.

What was it about the Kardashians in particular that inspired the show?

Lucy: I’ve struggled with a lot of body issues and one day I was travelling on the Tube in London and I saw this poster of Khloe Kardashian advertising her new protein shake and it says ‘can you keep up with a Kardashian?’ I got really angry and I just wanted to create a theatrical collective roar against that feeling. So that’s where the concept was born and that’s why I decided it needed to be collective and collaborative and  bring in so many people’s experiences of not feeling worthy in their bodies.

As the journey of the show has gone on our relationship towards the Kardashian’s has evolved. It started out as a pretty easy symbol of the marketing and monetisation of beauty as a form of control and then through our research throughout the show you kind of realise that they are just as trapped in it as everyone else. They are kind of a symbol of what we are talking about but they are not the enemy or villain of the show.

PJ: The best way to think about it is a piece of constructive criticism because they are also victims of the patriarchy and the show explores that as well.

Are you still performing the show?

Lucy: We’ve just finished our baby tour but are hoping to programme another show for spring and summer next year, taking it to a bigger space. So much of our journey has been with the show and now that we have kind of closed the first chapter of performing it, we are keen to do it again.

Are you working on any new projects, where will you be performing next?

Lucy: We’re focusing on our community and events here in Manchester and how to grow and strengthen that.

PJ: We want to maintain a sustainable way of bringing more artists in and strengthening this sort of community, supporting young and emerging artists.

Lucy: We do these theatrical, immersive clubbing events. On the 18th November at Wilson’s den, we are going to do the final event of a trilogy called ‘Bad Bitch Cabaret’. It’s set in ‘Hell’s Waiting Room’ and you come into a space that we call ‘Sparkles and Seduction’ and every cabaret act that comes on has been banished there by society. There’s drag, comedy, spoken word, poetry and there’s music. Scarlett and I host it and at the end we say ‘The gates of hell will open now’ and we have DJs playing for the rest of the night on ‘Hell’s dancefloor’.

PJ: it’s glorious and bonkers. You have about 2 hours worth of performances and 4 hours of the night out, it’s such a fun collision of cultures. so that’s where people can find us next.

What’s next for So La Flair? Where do you see the collective going?

PJ: We have values that we uphold and we’re on a mission to continue this collective and to be informed with elements of wellbeing whilst also having elements of punk and activism coming through our work. We want to make our vision come to life and prove that working in a less hierarchical way in theatre is do-able.

Lucy: We have a vision that with collaboration at the heart of theatre, we can create a space that’s very different to lots of typical rehearsal rooms. We are owning the fact that we are multi-disciplined but also the idea that if the arts were structurally more sustainable, there wouldn’t be this ‘everyone for themselves’ culture.

PJ: The end goal is to sustain a community and allow people to create their work in a supportive space.

To find out more about So La Flair follow @solaflairtheatre

Manchester Stories is an ongoing passion project by Blossom Manchester.

For more information or to get involved email: ruby@blossommanchester.co.uk