Fixed Term Freelance Producer Role
Hannah Ballou
Comedian/artist/researcher Dr. Hannah Ballou is looking for expressions of interest from freelance theatre, comedy, and/or live art producers with a track record of successful funding applications and collaborative creative producing to produce the sequel to her 2016 show, goo:ga to be performed and filmed in late May of 2021. Due to the uncertainty around the plausibility of live performance at that time, strategising around a blended delivery of the project (i.e. filming/streaming/live audience) will be key.
The role will initially entail a fixed term of 10 half-days for a planning phase to be scheduled by mutual agreement as appropriate to its goals, which are:
1. Secure a venue for live performance and/or filming of goo:ga II between the 1st and 27th of May, 2021.
2. Assist with the launching of a crowd-funding campaign on 19th Feb, 2021.
3. Developing a budget and fundraising strategy including authoring a funding application to support the documentation and production costs of work (including the funding for your own continued involvement beyond the initial planning phase.)
4. Formulate a preliminary marketing plan and solicit partnerships with relevant organisations.
Fee: £75/half day, £750 total.
About the show: goo:ga was a comic live art show originally written and performed by Ballou in the eight month of her first pregnancy in 2016. It was a performance practice research project investigating the potential of a dissonant manifestation of funniness and sexiness by the pregnant body to challenge heteronormative and patriarchal configurations of the comic vis-à-vis the erotic. It was a feminist reclamation of fertility as spectacle, a queer resistance to the guilty pleasure of binary foetal gendering, and a neo-burlesque attempt to exploit multiple aesthetic modes of sexiness whilst harnessing the comic abjection of pregnancy. Five years later, Ballou is expecting her second child. The biological process is the same, but everything else could not be more different; her 5-year-old wants in on the action, one co-star is in an urn, she’s haunted by the ghosts of miscarriages past, and honestly she just cannot get as worked up about kid number two. This sequel, goo:ga II has fun with the impossibility of re-performing old work even though you really should try to give your second child everything you gave your first. It’s essentially a cross between Ali Wong’s Hard Knock Wife and Ursula Martinez’ A Family Outing- 20 Years On.
About the artist: Ballou’s work is feminist, sometimes autobiographical, and challenges configurations of the comic body by asking who is funny, when, how, why, and why not? She is known to work with live animals and sleeping children. She once found out she was pregnant live on stage. She is the force behind Marina Abramopug and neo-burlesque alter-ego Lambchop Magoo. Recent shows include Shhh, The Doctor Is In, goo:ga, and hoo:ha. Collaborations include Womxn SRSLY, GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN, and PanicLab. She is a lecturer in Drama at Kingston University, London.
Please contact Dr. Ballou via email, briefly outlining why you are interested as well as details of relevant experience in producing, fundraising, and collaborative performance and a CV to h.ballou@kingston.ac.uk.
Closing date for expressions of interest: 6th Feb, with shortlisted candidates contacted for online meetings during week commencing 8th Feb.