{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.023186975826344353, 'fraction_numerical': 0.003453379378391712, 'mean_word_length': 5.126888217522659, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Desire and Danger in the Long Journey from Door to Table: An Exploration of Movement in Jenny Kemp's The Black Sequin Dress

The Melbourne based director and playwright Jenny Kemp has gained a reputation in Australia for producing carefully crafted, highly visual performances that defy easy categorisation. The cross arts collaborative working processes she favours result in the creation of multiple texts; written, aural, visual, cinematic and choreographic. These share the stage space in dynamic, uneasy relationship. This article examines the use of movement in one of Kemp’s plays, The Black Sequin Dress, to reveal the relationship between a character’s inner world and external behaviour, a primary concern of Kemp’s. Movement is a forceful component found in every aspect of the performance and is not restricted to the physical expression of the actors. Kemp employs, for example, detailed description of movement in voice over and dialogue, filmed projection and a choreographer’s skill in the manipulation of the many simultaneously active elements of the stage space Kemp’s desire to make her own work originally sprang from her frustration as a director at the lack of plays that resonated with her interest in making the inner world visible on stage. As Peta Tait observes ‘Kemp criticises a theatre which merely duplicates the outward naturalistic appearances of social reality as unsatisfying and indicative of an impoverished vision’. Instead Kemp wishes to create a style of theatre that ‘is an investigation into the psyche and its ability to function creatively in a modern world’ with scope for inclusion of dreams, memories and fantasies. Kemp’s overtly political desire to reclaim the place of the inner world as a vital, healing, and at times a driving force in her female characters, has direct implications for the structure of her performances. An overarching story line is rejected in favour of an 1. Peta Tait, Converging Realities: Feminism in Australian Theatre (Sydney: Currency, 1994), p. 87.