Your Body is Yours: Racheal Ofori on So Many Reasons at Camden People's Theatre
My name is Racheal Ofori; a born and bred Londoner, headlining the Calm Down, Dear Festival of innovative, feminist theatre at Camden People’s Theatre with my new show SO MANY REASONS - which is a co-production between Fuel Theatre and Camden People's Theatre.
SO MANY REASONS is inspired by the gravitas mothers have on their daughters and how they help them navigate the world as women, particularly in aspects of their sex life. I’m particularly focusing on the cultural difference between a first-generation migrant mother and a first-generation citizen daughter, an example being my mother and I. The piece explores these cultural clashes, particularly challenging aspects of religion that is woven into a lot of west African culture. We watch Mel, (the daughter in the show) wrestling with these cultural and religious ideologies, while encountering the comedy of her first-time sexual experiences.
The show in a sentence: Your body is yours, you can f**k who you want.
The show navigates two polar ideologies – sexual purity and “sex is my currency” individualism/hedonism. I toy with these two concepts in the way that both can individually be toxically misogynistic – or at least, both can force women to behave in certain destructive ways.
I’d love people to leave after the performance feeling like they really own their own body. That you don’t have to adhere to either convention. I think it’s so important, especially for young women in our western society amid our very sexual(ised) culture that pretends to offer women sexual freedom/fulfilment, but does so within very strict and coercive parameters. I guess I’m challenging people to get out of those parameters.
So Many Reasons from Camden People's Theatre on Vimeo.
Performing SO MANY REASONS at Camden People’s Theatre all feels kind of full circle, because I performed my first solo show (PORTRAIT) for two nights there for the first ever Calm Down, Dear festival in 2013. Fuel Theatre went on to produce PORTRAIT and has since appeared at Southbank Centre (Women of the World Festival, 2015) and broadcast on the BBC. Now SO MANY REASONS, is co-produced by the two! I wrote and starred in PORTRAIT, as an experiment, I guess, and that's how my journey with the two theatre companies began.
Next for me? Well the show goes on tour!! Very exciting. And then we round up at Ovalhouse in the same week as international women’s day, so that's pretty dope!