Lily McMenamy Brings A HOLE IS A HOLE to London Performance Studios

Lily McMenamy will bring A Hole is a Hole to London Performance Studios next month. Performances will run September 3 and 4 at 7.30pm.

In a striking debut, Lily McMenamy presents the construction of a female performer as a metamorphosing and multiplying vessel. Inhabiting a swarm of personae, McMenamy asks us who is subject to our aesthetic and erotic drives, when the relations between artist and model, monster and maker, are thrown into the blender of one singular body.

Part catharsis and part satire, this uproarious solo is a biting exploration of the identities and contradictions that live ‘rent free’ in the psyche, a surreal cast of internal voices vying for autonomy. Whether poignant flashback or freakish nightmare, our protagonist’s perilous trajectory crosses continents, embodying ingenue and muse while occupying a Pandora’s Box of egos, ghouls and grifters. 

Via quickfire vignettes, McMenamy’s physical dexterity, sometimes poised and often reckless, adds a sense of abandon and clownishness to this high-octane melodrama. A mirrored backdrop creates infinite tableaus, evoking the carnivalesque or classic cinema as the studios, nightclubs and forests of the subconscious take the stage.

Lily McMenamy (she/her) is a model and theatre maker born in the US living in London. She holds a diploma in physical theatre from L'École Jacques Lecoq and a Masters in Performance Making from Goldsmiths, University of London. Her work appropriates and transforms languages, archetypes, and gestures in order to disarticulate the performance of marketplace femininity and to celebrate the grotesque as a vehicle for freedom. McMenamy’s work has been presented at Cabinet Gallery, London (2021), and the Volksbühne Berlin where she was resident artist in 2018 amongst others. Her writings have been featured in CURA magazine and she is a regular contributor to Marfa Journal. McMenamy’s association with London Performance Studios focuses on creation of a new solo performance work informed by her ongoing research in mime and the female grotesque towards the development of an embodied theory of modelling. This explores techniques for writing, devising, and performing, drawn from visual and theatrical art discourses. Public touch points for this research and development include a series of workshops building towards a production presented at London Performance Studios in 2025.

London Performance Studios is a queer container for the research, generation, and promotion of artistic voices that meet in the space between the white cube of the gallery and the black box of the theatre. LPS seeks to queer artistic process, operating within radically transparent and intersectional structures. We champion the politics of making a scene, whether on stage or out in the world.

Photo Credit: Aidan Zamiri

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