SoLow Fest review: CatCal]
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
The festival continues through Sunday.
Danielle Solomon
As part of the 2014 SoLow independent performance festival, I caught the preview Wednesday of the show, CatCal] (that's actually how it's spelled). Check out the remaining SoLow Fest shows through the weekend. Experimental theater and some inevitable strangeness abound. If we're ever to become more adventurous audiences of performance here in Philly, though, these shows are the place to start.
"Together we will experience the practice of being catcalled."
That’s the premise of CatCal], artist Danielle Solomon’s entry into the 2014 SoLow Fest. Like many offerings in the 4-years-old festival, the performance departs the traditional theater space (some fest shows take place in public playgrounds, people’s basements, for an audience of one, etc.) and invites the audience to follow performers around Philadelphia via subway.
CatCal], while unconventional, sometimes uncomfortable and sometimes heavy-handed, does reach toward a significant point: The discomfort of being leered at, followed, shouted at or stared at (whether in a predatory/potentially harmful way or not) is a very real experience of Philadelphia women, and women everywhere.
On Wednesday morning, I met two other spectators — the show is meant for an audience of 10, at the largest — outside the shell of The Divine Lorraine Hotel. We follow Solomon via subway across the city, led by a "tour guide" (you’re provided with subway tokens), where we watch her being followed by a man (part of the performance) on the train, on the streets of Philly and in a vacant parking structure.
Collectively, the audience is a part of Solomon's experience — the audience members talk to one another during the journey, and the performers and audience rode the subway back to the hotel afterward, discussing the performance and learning about one another — and it’s a novel way to encourage audience participation, discussion and community.
The audio component of the tour (you get an iPod to listen to pre-recorded tracks) lets the listener in on Solomon’s inner monologue. On the train, we watch her as her voice on the track says that she feels stared at, like a statue, like a monument people think they can enter, but she says she is "not a building.” Also on the track is a man’s voice, saying “Smile. Smile…you’d be so much prettier if you smiled.” That request, for a woman to smile as she’s walking down the street or going about her business — it’s safe to say that many women have been on the receiving end of that seemingly mild form of street harassment that's an insulting request for a women to look more beautiful to those around her.
We took the train all the way to the 69th Street stop, where Solomon took off running, the man following behind her. We listened to the second track, where though she was out of sight, we could hear her voice as she ran. She was saying things like, “Smile? Why would I just be running down the street smiling? Fuck, are these shorts too short? I should have changed into longer shorts, maybe they’ll stop staring,” etc.
There, we ended up in a (sort of creepy) empty parking structure. Solomon did a kind of dance with a length of colorful reflective wrapping paper, with her follower approaching her from across the lot. That whole “woman being attacked in a desolate parking garage” feeling was a truly disconcerting moment of the tour. It ends with Solomon chasing her follower away, across the lot, and him crumpling to a heap on the ground.
Despite some of the performance imagery being a little convoluted (I wasn't sure how the moment where Solomon and her follower do a synchronized dance on the subway steps together was relevant until Solomon explained her thoughts--it's neat to be able to have a post-show chat with her) CatCal] does two things: It pulls the audience outside its comfort zone, into the very genuine experience of a woman going about her day in Philadelphia, and it allows the spectator to bond with others in discussion, reaction and empathy for the performer.
The show is a very unique way to approach the topic of objectification and street harassment, and is worth checking out, if you're willing to be just as uncomfortable as a viewer as Solomon is being catcalled.
The show continues June 28 and 29 at 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. You must email danimsolo@gmail.com for reservations.
