She Goat Debuts Iron Fantasy at Soho Theatre

The critically acclaimed actor-musicians behind company She Goat are set to debut their new showIron Fantasyat Soho Theatre this March, a sweaty, funny and unexpectedly tender live music theatre show asking one deceptively simple question –what does it mean to feel strong?

Inspired by 1990s TV fantasy shows and medieval aesthetics, Iron Fantasy stems from Olivier award-winning co-creators Shamira Turner and Eugénie Pastor (Wolf Witch Giant Fairy, Royal Ballet & Opera; Orpheus, Little Bulb) wanting to find out why they were finding it so difficult to say no. It follows two confrontation-avoidant gentle beings on a quest to pump iron, strap on armour, and finally learn how to fight back. Featuring live flute, autoharp, singing, electronic beats and eating raw egg on stage, the show blends gym anthems with medieval music, fantasy training montages with autobiographical reflection.

Over the past four years, they took up weightlifting, trained with a fight choreographer, and led workshops with children, teenagers, and older women to explore how ideas of strength are formed early, how deeply they are gendered, and how they change as bodies age. Resilience and emotional endurance were familiar, but the kinds of strength they longed for felt off-limits and mysterious. As one six-year-old put it, strength is “pulling a car with your teeth!” Was this fantasy strength, the stuff of blockbuster heroes, what they needed to solve their problems?

She Goat is the franglais collaboration between Shamira Turner and Eugénie Pastor. The two met making shows in Little Bulb Theatre and, as a duo, they’re known for blurring the boundaries between theatre and live music, autobiography and fiction. Within the show, the pair move between clownish, cartoon versions of themselves and moments of striking honesty. Wearing armour fashioned from kitchen utensils and shoelaces, they attempt training regimes, side-quests and fight moves, never pretending to be experts, but instead inviting the audience into the vulnerability and comedy of trying.

Eugénie Pastor comments:We wanted to make this show to find out if we could feel strong, and to do that we had to ask: why didn’t we feel strong already? Through workshops with participants of all ages, we’ve been exploring what it means to grow up, live, age with the idea that one is ‘less’ physically strong than others. This felt more urgent as our own bodies kept changing, in a world that shows no sign of reducing its epidemic of violence against women and girls. 

Shamira Turner comments:Making this show, our relationship to our bodies began to shift from how they look from the outside towards what they can do and how that feels from the inside. We hope the show can reimagine what ‘strong’ is. Can we vanquish our fears? Can we find the strength to stand firm as the world crashes down around us? Have we made some songs about it? Yes, we have!

Surreally funny…They use their bodies boldly, in a way that is still rare to see in women on stage  –★★★★ The Stage onDoppelDänger

Completely engrossing – both Pastor and Turner are incredibly multi-talented.

Exeunt onDoppelDänger

Main Image: Iron Fantasy by She Goat | Photographer: Rui Henriques

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