We all know the formula, right?
Boy meets girl, they fall in love, conflict occurs, boy loses girl, boy finds girl again, true love triumphs and they all live happily ever after.
But what do you do if it’s girl meets girl? How will they know who’s meant to sweep whom off their feet? What if both parties are troubled by a dark secret? And can one be a lady sheikh?
Betsy Turcot and Eleanor Jackson blend popular romance, slam poetry, found sound and sensual double bass to create a poetic narrative about love in a modern age.
The narrative builds from a sequence of both solo and joint poems and showcases queer performance poetry, young female voices and the tantalising premise that political poetry can also be sexy. Both poets are comfortable performers who are able to engage audiences with vernacular poetry yet are also mindful that rich, thoughtful language is worth savouring and worth sharing.
The contrasting, but complimentary, styles of the two performers also present an opportunity for audiences to share in the diversity of female spoken word performance, which often competes for space with the bombast of hip-hop.
As Australia wrestles with the community debate around marriage equality, “A Mills and Boon Swoon” tosses aside the conventions of gender, to trade poems that are part elegy to clichéd love poetry, part cumulative tale, part SMS shout out and part call to arms, embracing the only convention of the genre that holds true – that we are all looking for love.
This performance is on for two shows only on 14 September: 6.30 pm and 8.30 pm