Who's that girl?

As the performance opened, the frail figure of Higginbotham was slumped in a beach chair in what looked more like a gravel-pit than an exotic beach, in spite of the artificial sunshine and fluffy clouds. Her movements as well as her monologues held the essence of the performance. One of the most memorable monologues was her naming of personal belongings, her voice and body becoming more and more strained until the act turned in to a post-modern chanting of sutras to a non-existing god.

Gradually the performance developed into a merciless study of contemporary alienation, caused by an inner emptiness, where all that remains of previous generations’ spiritual belief is a kind of consumerism. The pure audacity demonstrated by throwing a performance pervaded with alienation and meaninglessness in the face of the audience was enough to make me curious.
Who’s that girl? I asked myself.

The girl in question – Gemma Higginbotham – readily declares that meeting Philippe Blanchard sparked off an intense creative development in her (and in him). This burst of creativity and the development it set in motion made it possible for her to get closer to what she feels to be the essence of her ...