martyn coutts

My Stories, Your Emails
Ursula Martinez
Malthouse Theatre
Melbourne International Comedy Festival
8th April 2010, 8pm

Well known in cabaret circles with a provocative kinda strip, kinda magic act, Ursula Martinez performed on a mainstage at the Malthouse with a cohesive and clever piece of contemporary performance.

I am unsure if she worked with a director or dramaturge but this work seemed to be weaved – motifs and ideas returning in new and interesting ways.

I think the concept that came through loud and clear for me was the notion of exploitation and the layers of voyeurism that entertainment and the internet has created.

If you consider this chain of events – Ursula Martinez carries out a performance which is leaked onto the internet via youtube without her permission. It goes viral, people respond by email (some rather crudely as it was quite a saucy act), Ursula responds to the emails and then uses them and photos of the men in a new show. The show tours and perhaps one of the men comes to the show to view it. It’s enough to make a postmodernists head explode.

Beyond this is something darker and questionable. Who is being exploited here?
Ursula clearly has been exploited, for whilst she does do an act in front of people live where she gets naked, it is her right to control the circumstances in which she does this, and internet broadcast is not one of these.
However she embodies each of the men as she reads their emails, and surely this is also exploitation, these men must not know what she is doing with this material. More often than not these men are made out to be losers in her reading of it.
And yet somehow it feels alright, as much as i don’t like seeing people being made fun of, the fact of talking about it brings to the surface how easy misrepresentation and exploitation can happen over the web.