About The Short Works
Moira Finucane has often described her short works as "grabbing an image and squeezing every bit of life blood out of it." These works, which originated in nightclubs, have become infamous for their intense physicality, their driving and often obscure soundtracks, and their dark sexuality and humour. Whilst they have developed into two distinct forms - one textual and the other entirely physical - they share a minute attention to physical gesture, to character and to music. These elements coalesce to plunge the audience into Finucane's intense imaginative terrain - be it a wild improbable adventure, a gothic image of grief and loss, or a hysterical and feral portrayal of monstrous sexuality that literally has audiences squealing and running in fear and delight.
Finucane has created over 20 of these works in the last decade. Their continued creation marks the coalface of her development and experimentation as an artist.
The Burlesques are intensely physical and visual. The sound is integral, driving but obscure takes on hardcore, rock 'n' roll, industrial and disco. Amongst them are:
The Queen of Hearts: The Queen of Hearts is a showgirl shark - in a red velvet bikini bristling with three inch spikes, covered with iridescent red metallic hearts, her hair is suspended by red helium balloons, her intention is murderous, her bikini does the work. One hundred and fifty balloons and a very hard core industrial sound track later, the audiences - from London to Edinburgh, from Sydney Opera House to The Victorian Arts Centre, are screaming for more. She cause a near riot in a London club. The Queen of Hearts is murderous art.
The Dairy Queen: Set to the howling mayhem of Babes in Toyland - Catatonic.
The Dairy Queen is monstrous. Six foot tall, strings of silver beads over a white bikini and silver platforms, she is wielding four litres of milk, she is feral, and she is a lot of scary fun. At her core is a commentary on liberation and an exploration of unharnessed and unpunished sexual expression.
Expresso - The Waitress: Set to a techno build of 1000 beats per minute, Moby's 1000, The Waitress is intense, psychotic, giggling, disturbing. Entering in a micro version of a red diner uniform, the waitress 'makes' a cup of coffee from nowhere, extracting the ingredients hidden in her tiny costume. Her driving image is feminine sexualised service - she is mute and 'cute' and literally serves from her body. Her subversion is her messy violent, destructive, blindness.
Romeo: Set to Australian icons The Divinyls; I Touch Myself.
Romeo is a male embodiment. Casual, arrogant, good lookin' Italian stallion, Romeo strips out of his leather jacket, boots, jeans, and T-shirt to show what he's got. Never for a moment does he lose his masculinity, creating a bizarre visual 'slippage' between female form and masculine gender. At his heart, Romeo is gender at it's most constructed and convincing.
Sauce: Set to the vocally raw Felicity Hunter's Hardcore Adore. A woman, with a gentle, lost air, in a white uniform, caresses a 3 litre plastic bottle of tomato sauce. As the piece progresses, the woman squeezes and hugs the bottle and it begins to 'bleed' sauce. Eventually she 'kills' it, sauce oozes over her, she obsessively tries to wipe herself clean. At the core of Sauce is abject grief.
The Monologues Finucane's monologues are richly descriptive, romantic, gothic and surreal. Embedded in her writing is her love of fables, of fairy tales, and of the gore and the glory in the old stories of the Catholic Saints. Her writing has been likened to the work of Isabel Allende, Angela Carter, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Best known of these are:
The Monologues of Argentina Gina Catalina: A series of monologues, set to a selection of highly emotive classical music pieces, featuring Argentina Gina Catalina, a Spanish super-surreal character, that explores archetypes, liberation and magic-realism. Argentina is an extraordinary adventuress - swimming with killer whales, growing up with wolves, hunting with bears, melting opera houses with her passion. Her stories are hilarious, overblown, sensuous and ultimately life-affirming.
Ice: Argentina is abandoned, as a baby, on the ice in the very far north as her mother is forced to make her way as an aerial artiste. Documents her life with wolves, bears, killer whales, and bandidoes before she is miraculously reunited with her mother.
Heat: Argentina walks the sizzling streets of Madrid in the height of the summer. She climbs the roof of the great opera house and melts it with the tears of her love for music. She falls into the aria and every glass and every heart in the house is shattered by her passion.
Meat: Argentina trawls the alleys of Barcelona with her 12 corpulent pet dogs, looking for meat.
The Miracle of the Market: It is the height of spring and Argentina is in the marketplace. The fishmongers lay ice in the aisles to cool her feverish feet. Every fruit, every creature of the sea, and all of the creatures of the land call out to her to eat them. She eats a little cake made of fire and the love of the Virgin, grows golden wings and ascends.
The Short Works - Key Information
Premiere Season
The first short work created was Argentina Gina Catalina in "Meat" for 1993 Equilibrium Dance Party, The Club, Melbourne, Australia
Creative Team:
Director & Co-creator: Jackie Smith
Writer & Performer: Moira Finucane
Touring History
(Selected works - including Dairy Queen, Expresso, Romeo, Argentina Gina Catalina)
2005 The Famous Spiegeltent, Edinburgh UK
2005 Medium Rare, Raymond's Revue, London UK
2005 Duckie, London UK
2004 Blue Rinse, Melbourne International Festival of the Arts, Melbourne , Australia
2003 Duckie - avant garde performance club London , UK
2003 The Famous Spiegeltent Edinburgh , UK
2003 The Blue Thong, Melbourne International Festival of the Arts, Melbourne , Australia
2002 The Famous Spiegeltent, Melbourne International Festival, Melbourne, Australia
2002 The Famous Spiegeltent, Adelaide Fringe Festival, Adelaide, Australia
2002 Word is Out, writers festival, Trades Hall & Builder's Arms, Melbourne, Australia
2001 The Famous Spiegeltent, Melbourne International Festival, Melbourne, Australia
2000 Duckie Performance Club, Vauxhall Tavern, London, UK
1999 - 2000 Live Acts, Chunky Move Dance Company, Melbourne, Australia
1999 Mardi Gras, Seymour Centre, Sydney
1998 Chunky Move, Storey Hall, Melbourne, Australia
1997 -98 Maverick Arts Festival, Melbourne, Australia
1997 Melbourne International Festival Club, Melbourne, Australia
1996 Festival of Contemporary Art, Gorman House, Canberra, Australia
1996 Duckie Performance Club, Vauxhall Tavern, London, UK
1996 UK tour of cLUB bENT: Green Room, Manchester; Zap Club, Brighton Festival, Brighton; Jackson's Lane, Brixton Shaw, London; UK.
1996 The Roxy Ballroom, The Brisbane Festival, Brisbane, Australia
1995-1998 cLUB bENT, Mardi Gras, The Performance Space, Sydney, Australia
1995 Tasmanian Pride Festival, Hobart, Australia
1995 Performance, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australiav
1995 25 Years of Performance Art, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, Australia.
1994 Art in the Age of AIDS, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia
1994 Brisbane Pride Festival, Brisbane, Australia
1994 Melbourne International Film Festival, Melbourne, Australia
Touring Availability
Available to tour in 2005, 2006, 2007
Touring Presentation Options
The Short Works have been be presented in a number of configurations
- As part of a 'variety' or cabaret night with other artists' work (to allow for costume changes) (as per Chunky Move's Live Acts, Famous Spiegeltent (Australia & UK), cLUB bENT Sydney Performance Space & UK Tour)
- 1-3 pieces presented at a time (some characters are able to transform into the next character in an onstage transformation) interspersed with a local guest or a local MC
(as per National Gallery of Australia, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Festival of Contemporary Art, Canberra)
- As stand alone works (monologues) in a writer's festival or spoken word presentation. The monologues have also been presented on radio and commissioned for radio. (as per Word Is Out, cLUB bENT, Maverick Arts Festival, National Gallery of Australia, Radio National)
