XV International School of Performance
It is July. But this time, it is July 1789. Whilst France is in turmoil on the eve of the revolution, in England, 237 women imprisoned for prostitution and minor crimes are rounded up from Britain’s most notorious prisons and boarded onto the Lady Julian, bound for unknown colonies. Firenza Guidi’s new show is inspired by Sian Rees’s book, The Floating Brothel, a historical account of the journey undertaken by extraordinary women: prostitutes, vagrants, pickpockets, forgers, thieves of chickens and sacred objects, plunderers of aristocratic carriages and fabric shops, and poor wretches whose only crime had been to fall in love with the wrong man, paying for love at the high price of honour.
The ship, nicknamed the floating brothel, was intended to provide sexual services and a pool of women for procreation to the settlers who had already landed at Botany Bay, in New South Wales. The city they would go on to found would be called Sydney, Australia.
When
14 July 2006 – 16 July 2006
Where
Medici Bridge at Cappiano – Fucecchio
