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gofree

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From: Hong Kong

Registered: 2006-07-18

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In the raw

Ursula Martinez doesn't just take her clothes off on stage. She takes her parents' off, too.

Show Off

If the name rings a bell and the face looks familiar but you can't quite place her, it may be that you do not recognise Ursula Martinez with all her clothes on. As well as working regularly with experimental theatre group Duckie, and on the burlesque scene with La Clique, over the past eight years Martinez has also created a trilogy of highly personal shows - A Family Outing, Show Off and OAP - that have stripped the real Ursula Martinez completely bare. This week, she gets her prize in the form of a Barbican retrospective of those works under the title Me, Me, Me!, a slogan that sums up Martinez's success in turning self-obsession into an art form.

Me, Me, Me!

"I'm not known for being backwards in coming forwards," she smiles, when we meet in an underground room in the Barbican. "My work has always been full of irony and a high level of self-awareness." Most theatre artists have to wait until they are dead and buried for a retrospective, but Martinez is not yet 40; with splendid irony, her 40th birthday will fall on the opening night of the final show in the trilogy, OAP, which movingly explores her paranoia about growing old. In fact, it was only eight years ago, at the Edinburgh festival, that Martinez sprang from nowhere with her first show, A Family Outing, in which the poster depicted Martinez and her elderly parents - Mila and Arthur - stark naked.

A Family Outing

The joy of A Family Outing is that it operates on so many levels, focusing on the ordinary rather than the sensational, and making you look at your own family relationships. "All the work does come out of my self-obsession," says Martinez, "but if I was wholly up my own arse I don't think audiences would want to see it. Exploring myself has also been a way of exploring the universal. Otherwise, the work wouldn't have been a success."

Hanky Panky

What's clear about Martinez is that when she's performing she has no fear. It has to be like that - because, along with dispensing with the traditional conventions of theatre, she often also dispenses with her clothes. She puts herself in places that are dangerous - her legendary strip.

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2006.10.11 The Guardian

gofree

Founder of clothesFREE

From: Hong Kong

Registered: 2006-07-18

Posts: 1,179

Re: In the raw

"Light My Fire" - Martinez's latest creation for clubs, cabaret, art events and parties.