BITCH BOXER begins before the audience is really aware that it has started. The house lights are on when 21 year old female boxer, Chloe wanders onto the acting space to start her workout. Skipping in a gentle, school yard fashion she sees but does not react to us (the audience) as we focus on taking our seats.
As her skipping speeds up in a well-established cardio routine, the rope noise is as loud as the pre-show music and the house lights fade. By then the athlete is ringed by light and moving in a blur. In the same way as this character slowly enters our consciousness, performer Jordan Cowan gradually, with craft and charisma, lands the pugilist protagonist squarely in our midsection.
Chloe is up for the Women’s Boxing team at the 2012 London Olympics. This is the first time that the women’s sport is making an appearance. Chloe is born for this. Her father is her coach and champion; she lives just down the road from the stadium and she has natural ability honed into skill by her single minded drive. And being head over heels for the new boyfriend or grieving for a recent loss or being harassed about being a lady by her abandoning mother won’t get under her skin unless she lets it. But is their combined weight cracking her shell?!
The play is by Charlotte Josephine and won the Holden Street Theatres Awards 2013 at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. An actor and boxer herself, she conceived the show after being called unladylike by some guy as she carried heavy equipment at her coffee shop job. The character she created, and originally portrayed, has long hair, a love of discos, drinks Cherry Sambuca and has the nerve to push back against what other people think about femaleness.
Cowan has just the right physique for this character. That initial solo skipper is athletic and rangy and in the ring her jabs and uppercuts have real power and truth. She has obviously worked hard on the physicality of this role from shadow boxing or fighting an enviable opponent to sometimes standing completely still with folded arms speaking into the auditorium. Plus she can change into girly girl going-out clothes or her gloves and fight gear with equal belief.
Director David Mealor has her using the whole stage not just the arena ringed by light. When she is out of the spotlight, Cowan’s artistry in giving Chloe a true voice is powerfully expressed.
When she speaks directly to us for the first time, the working class English accent of Leytonstone takes some tuning into, and this is part of the gentle way we get to know Chloe. She mumbles a bit in the beginning as you do when you meet strangers but when the physical synchronises with the verbal in that first story about breaking into her own house by leaping fences, Chloe is understandable and relatable.
Over the next hour we get to know her better and Cowan tenderly opens her up so that we will root for her success both in the ring and her life. By the final silhouetted view of Chloe, Cowan has delivered a young woman of depth and humanity. It’s a knockout performance that leaves the audience with a gentle understanding that will inform our view of every other female athlete we encounter.
A Someone Like U production, Charlotte Josephine’s BITCH BOXER played as part of the BONDI FEAST and is moving to District 01 soon.
For more about BITCH BOXER visit- http://someonelikeuproductions.com/current_shows.html