Caroline Smith
Spank
Spank is a duet about two women’s journeys as they play out different roles. One woman recalls stinging anecdotes marked by intimacy, jealousy, fear and fantasy from her childhood in the 70s suburbs – round the corner from where Mike Leigh would film Life Is Sweet. Her Double (projected on screen) reads from a newspaper about an event that punctured the local community, creating an enduring cultural scar, her voice lacking emotion. Both women must eventually face one another and ask, who is deceiving whom? The consequences of guilt and shame and the unstable shift from private memory to public consequence is inevitable and deadly.
Caroline Smith is a writer and live artist. She is Attitude magazine’s Arts Editor and has contributed to Creative Camera, Contemporary, Women’s Art Magazine, Wasafiri and Black Book in New York. Cornerhouse Publications and Tank have published her creative non-fiction; her fiction is published in The Issues magazines and Brand, where she is a Contributing Editor. Her performances have been shown at Old Naval College, and Antenna Studios in London and Frequencies in Athens. Her work merges darkness with comedy and explores queering the body, issues around mental health and female desire. She is Senior Lecturer at Greenwich University.
Funded by Greenwich University.