I LOVE YOU BUT YOU MAKE ME WANT TO CUT MY HAIR. Critically acclaimed tragi-comedy, SPLIT ENDS transferring from Brighton, Camden and Edinburgh Fringe, follows the story of a woman who falls in love with a Vacuum. Using physical theatre, puppetry and multi-media, this ‘Sarah Kane Rave’ explores control and abusive power disguised as love.
The thing about split ends is that as soon as you cut one off, somewhere else on the head, another strand of hair will split. Cut, split, cut split, ad infinitum. Claudia, “a real tour-de-force” (ReviewsHub) is consumed by her split ends until she fell in love with a Vacuum, an actual Vacuum, who happened to be the hairiest thing she’d ever fallen in love with. A thing that made her want to pluck her arm hairs, wax her legs and cut her hair. The Vacuum would shed his hairs, leave, disappear, reappear, shed, tell her he loved her, tell her he lied, leave, shed, appear, shed, malt, love, lie, cheat, shed, shed. Claudia cut hairs, plucked hairs, vacuumed hairs, hunted hairs, waiting for him to pull the plug on what they had because she couldn’t. In an exploration of coercive control, love and the addiction to people who hurt us, this five star production which is “as raw as they come…sheer inventiveness” (LouReviews) attempts to understand when we are meticulously in control or incredibly out of it.
An autobiographical solo show, of which Claudia Shnier, writer, director and creator says: “I have given my whole heart to this piece. It has been incredibly healing and empowering to give voice to an experience that I wasn’t able to for such a long time.”
Trigger warnings: scenes of sexual nature, references to sexual assault and mental illness