Broken Windows

100487 original

Broken Windows explores what it is to be female and making the transition from girlhood to adulthood in contemporary Britain. It is a verbatim piece drawing on interviews by the writer/performer Caitlin Ince, with accompanying music composed by Matthew White. Ince embodies the women she has met as they hesitantly explore the pressures on their femininity, while White voices Ince's thoughts. It's a neat trick ensuring all participants are treated equally.

So we meet teenagers on the cusp of their adult lives discussing educational pressures, sport, unrealistic media imagery, sex and virginity, and unhealthy relationships with food. While some of the views presented perhaps offer views of contemporary femininity that are unsurprising, there is a story of a football protégé planning to turn her back on the game that adroitly plays out the conflicts of identity. Putting verbatim accounts to music enables Ince and White to foreground key phrases without disempowering those that have agreed to take part in the project.

The piece moves along swiftly, with little stabs of humour and an emotional denouement of hope. But it's a shame the research that underpins the project is not more incisive; after all, we're invited to get a sense of contemporary femininity via six interviews alone. And while the media get it in the neck there's little engagement with the wider social, political and economic forces that entrap women, and so the show remains predominantly personal. Still, it's an affecting piece performed with conviction and charm that encourages thought without being hectoring.