dressed.

ThisEgg, Josie Dale-Jones, Lydia Higginson, Nobahar Mahdavi, Olivia Norris

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781786827241
• eBook ISBN: 9781786827258
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Violence in Society
• Index: Social Sciences

Winner of the Untapped Award 2018. After being stripped at gunpoint, Lydia set out to redress herself with a new healing set of armour. Lydia now only wears clothes she has made. Told with a tender intimacy, dressed. is a true story told by four women who have been friends since school. Combining choreography, live sewing, comedy and original music, dressed. celebrates the power clothes have to define us, to liberate us, to hide us and to embellish us.

dressed.

When text can’t conjure up the feeling, we sing.

When words can’t describe the feeling, we move.

We play ourselves. When that’s too much, we put on costumes:

CLOWN – Funny. An idiot. She brings the light (or tries to at least).

SHOWGIRL – Perfect, beautiful and pure. Everything a woman should be.

WARRIOR – Our need to fight. She runs the show, is strong. She’s fighting.

SEDUCTRESS – The darkness. Sensual. She holds on to the trauma.

Both on and off stage are visible.

It doesn’t matter so much who says what unless it is specifically marked. Anything in brackets is not said.

There are four microphones with long cables. They are mostly used for singing and narrating, there is no real rule. It can get a bit of a mess.

There is music. It is upbeat, and very funky.

All four women are wearing matching black outfits. They are made up of simple trousers with elasticated waistbands and long-sleeved open-back tops.

Audience enter to ten-year-old JOSIE, LYDIA, NOBAHAR and OLIVIA dancing, sometimes alone, sometimes together. The movement comes from who they were then; they peer around doors, they kick footballs, chew gum, you know, generally trying to be cool, not being so cool…

They begin to introduce each other (or themselves). Always in third person and in past tense.

That’s Josie. We met when we were ten at a swimming pool party…she was the only girl on the boys’ football team. I thought she was really cool…

Liv always ate leftover pudding at breakfast. She was in the year above me and I thought that it was really cool we were friends. She used to be shy around most people that were older than her. Maybe that’s why she hung out with me.

Nobahar used to watch Britney Spears’ Live in Vegas on the TV and then line up all her teddy bears on her bed and do concerts for them with a straw tucked behind her ear like a microphone.

This is Lyd, with loads of hair. When we were growing up she used to scavenge bits of wood out of people’s skips and make go-karts out of them. She also used to hate her nose and her pubes. She is fine with them now though.

We all met each other at a dance class when we were ten. This was the routine we were learning.

They go to their starting positions. Four little girls start their dance. They give it everything. Pure joy. Sometimes the choreography is a little bit sexy. They try their best with that.

This was our favourite move.

They do the absolute best move of the routine.

This routine ends with the jazz finish (of course).

They hold – 2, 3, 4.

The music cuts out.

Silence. Maybe some heavy breathing. But it’s definitely quiet for the first time now.

LYDIA: I remember the exact outfit I was wearing the night I was stripped and sexually assaulted at gunpoint.

Can you close your eyes now.

The audience should close their eyes.

While the following text is delivered, NOBAAHAR, JOSIE and OLIVIA take off their clothes and put them on again. An act of solidarity.

It was a lace camisole that was torn from my body to expose my chest, which was then grabbed and groped. I desperately tried to hold on to my skirt and knickers but had my head kicked into the ground for doing so. The skirt and knickers were pulled off so that hands could reach so far inside me it felt like my womb was going to be pulled out. The camisole I was wearing that night had been given to me by the wonderful woman whose house I had been living in for the last three months. She had found it at the market a few weeks before and thought it would suit me. I ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• From Lydia Higginson
• From Josie Dale-Jones
• From Laurence Cook
• From Ava Wong Davies An Anatomy of Criticism
• dressed.