· It showed things we usually try to hide. I felt like I also wanted to go on stage ad talk to you and ask everyone else what they try to hide or feel conflicted about. It was awesome.
· Loved the raw honesty of your performance.
· So honest. Nudity helps with exploitation of gender theme. Feels liberating to watch.
· Loved the combo of music, honesty, surprises and humour.
· You made me a Britney fan by the end of it! And I did not like her before!
Johanne Hauge's An Unauthorised Autobiography found its power by exploding the rules constraining female behaviour and lived experience, creating something nasty, compelling, a little directionless: like watching a multiway drunken brawl from a night bus window. At a table, she translates as her mother describes over Skype exactly how she used to do make-up in the 80s, loading her eyelids with bright blue. She’s in childhood land, remembering the surreal insults that stuck with her at school. Stepping out into the audience, she’s a force to be reckoned with. She makes audience members suckle red wine from her booze-filled pregnancy bump, in a gross riff on motherly love.
http://exeuntmagazine.com/features/objectification-and-the-female-gaze-at-calm-down-dear/
You found some found original ways to use the monstrous feminine to explore issues of femininity, motherhood and pregnancy and general expectations of gender. These investigations can often produce cliched, one-dimensional work, but you managed to bring your own distinctive voice and rhythm to the project. You took full advantage of your faith in anarchy and made the chaos work for you and gave the overall piece a curiously sound structure. Your various texts were well written and provided surprising and entertaining analyses of gender roles. The juxtaposition of imagery -toothless old woman, continually pregnant young woman, neutral automaton, motherly instruction, satanic dancing -all collided very nicely to produce a strong and original feminist critique. There were also some great original accents such as offering wine to the audience from your pregnant belly. Overall this was a very good piece worth developing and performing in other contexts.
– Lois Weaver