Cunning Stunts

“Back in the '90s, I used to do a lot of performance in clubs and things like that in the queer community, and there are a few iconic monologues that came out of that time,” says Maude Davey; actor, performance artist and the woman who, in 1996, caused a bit of a stir when one such monologue, My Cunt, was made into a short film. Since then it has been reprised as part of the long-running Burlesque Hour, overseen by Moira Finucane and Jackie Smith, and it was Davey's performance in a recent Burlesque Hour show, Glory Box, that caught the attention of one of the SEXES Festival curators, Deborah Kelly.

Now, 16 years on from the first performances of the monologue, a slightly older and significantly more nude Davey will revisit the work as part of the SEXES Festival Live Art program at Carriageworks' Performance Space. “Back then I pretty much saw it as my mission to counter the proliferation of the phallus in every possible public discourse with an assertion of the cunt,” she tells. “I felt like it was important to talk about it, to show it, to be out there and to symbolise and to signify it and to put cunt up on every platform alongside phalluses because I felt like the cunt was loathed and vilified and thought of as disgusting and dirty and all those sort of things.

“The thing about SEXES is the piece is contextualised as [something] that was written in 1996, that came out of a particular stage of my life in terms of performance, and I want people to think about it in that way, rather than imagining these are thoughts that I'm having now. I wouldn't write that monologue now,” Davey clarifies.

“At first, I used to do it dressed,” Davey recalls, “And then one day Moira said, 'I think you should do it nude', and I said, 'Oh no, Moira, it'll never work', you know, the tagline is 'I'm not going to show you my cunt',” Davey delivers the infamous eight word opening line, “But she said, 'No no, just try it!' So, you know, I took my clothes off in her living room and did it and she went, 'That's great!' So after a few years I've started doing it in the nude, which was an interesting manifestation.

“You don't really get to see my cunt when I'm nude, I am unusual in the performing world in that I have a full bush; these days women don't have full bushes, but I do – a bit of a lady veil. The confronting thing for me about that monologue, performing it 16 years later, is that I talk a lot about my grandmother; there's that whole section about my grandmother's cunt in it,” Davey pauses, at first without explanation, and then sheepishly, in a manner that further highlights the differences between Davey-then and Davey-now, offers an apology, “Sorry, I'm in the street and there's people walking past, so if I start getting coy, you'll know why,” before continuing. “And so as I age and get to the point where some people in the audience are going to go, 'You're old enough to be my grandmother, lady', that gets a bit confronting for me. So I'm interested in doing it at SEXES in a kind of historical, retrospective kind of context.”