IN THE SPACE WITH… TAM REYNOLDS AKA MIDGITTE BARDOT

At the core of Old Diorama’s charitable purpose is providing space and opportunities for local and creative communities,  and - in so doing - we are fortunate to meet fascinating people doing inspiring things. This is the latest in a series of interviews with some of the creative people we support and commission at ODAC.

Tam Reynolds is one of the recipients of our Parallel Perspectives commissions, a paid residency for disabled artists providing two distinctly different locations (ODAC and LEVEL Centre) in which to explore their work. Read more about what Tam is up to below… all words and language are chosen by them.

Would you start by just tell us a little bit about you as a performer and what came before Parallel Perspectives?

I am a performer in drag and live art. My alter ego is named Midgitte Bardot. I created her in 2015. I moved to London in 2021 with the intention of rioting and developing a show, a full-length show. I normally work in drag and cabaret spaces, and then I started doing theatre stuff. 

Tell us about Midgitte!

Midgitte Bardot is a bastard. She is extremely entitled. On stage, she sings and she dances and she teases and she… doesn’t waste time; she takes it.

I use Midgitte to explore. To figure out what my relationship is with being a subject of curiosity. I think that she kind of flips everything and helps me kind of explore and play with the expectation of what a performer is, especially a performer who has a ‘freak’ body.

I explore what people’s expectations are and how to exceed people's expectations… or really… insult them, I guess. Dwarf entertainment (as a rule) tends to be low-brow for the taller masses. As someone who is effortlessly eye-catching, I become entitled and able to do what I want on stage and it becomes a show. This gives me a power I do not feel or have when I’m walking down the road. 

And how did this idea for a show come about?

I was recently in a show at the Royal Court called ‘Sound of the Underground’, written by Travis Alabanza and Debbie Hannan. A load of cabaret artists exploring and demonstrating the effects and reality of exploitation in the drag industry. In that show, I rekindled my love of acting. Being in something fully formed and complete. This feeling of, ‘we all know this isn’t real but let’s all pretend it is’, is so vital to survival and sanity when we are being lied to by the powers that be from the left, right and the other one. I love playing in a make-believe world. I love control even more.

This led me to start thinking about writing my show, which is something that a lot of people ask me. And I have ‘demand avoidance’, so I decided not to do that for ages. And then I started reading and doing some research about ‘Midgetism’, which is a term coined by a Disability Studies Lecturer with Dwarfism, Dr Erin Pritchard, about the discrimination and exploitation industry around dwarfism. She’s fab. Dry yet refreshing, and on point. 

I knew that it was going to be a sad fucking read. I wouldn’t have read it when I was younger because the world felt like it was against me and me alone. Now, I know it’s not personal, the world isn’t a fan of most freaks. So I read it to be creatively inspired by it and used it as a stimulus, and I came up with lots of different ideas on the topic of vengeance, I couldn't stop thinking about rioting, tyranny and vengeance. The idea of an oppressed individual looking back at times where it sounds like it's fond and utopian, but maybe it's tyrannical. We are living in charged times. The work I’m making now is less about playing in a dream world and more about playing with delusion as a survival mechanism for our current and respective hellscapes.

So then I started writing Midgitte Bardot’s backstory. What is her issue?  

It sounds fascinating - can we hear some more details about the show?

Its working title is ‘Shooting from Below’. The first performance is on 24th May at the Battersea Arts Centre, and it will be a work in progress… and then after that…quite a bit more but also TBC!

And the premise of the show is about a lifetime of ridicule, curiosity, patronization, and condescension. Freak show stuff. And if a person who was a product of that system, had power and a healthy dose of delusion. Imagining a backstory for Midgitte Bardot, from the cave systems below to the palaces, to the French Revolution, to knee capitation, to Hollywood to the Arts industry. It’s playing with form, meta, drag, funny, dark, camp, satisfying, unfair. 

It sounds very very intrigui -

Oh also It's a musical! I don't know how I forget that bit, but I forget it every time - probably because I've not written a whole song yet.

No songs?

Well one song. It's 30 seconds long, but it's great.

Is this the first show like this you’ve written?

Of this size and scale. This is the first. I have a habit of writing a show and then throwing it away immediately afterwards. But I realised that I wanted a baby. 

I'm not interested in long-term relationships with anyone else other than Midgitte Bardot. If that's the case, then I think we should have a baby, because that's normally what people do when they realize they’re short on ideas in their long-term relationships. So I’m committed to it and I’m sticking to it. I think this show has been in my head, heart and bones forever. Feels wanky but even before I was born. I feel tethered to the people with dwarfism who were and are performing/transgressing against their will in the palaces, private parties, clubs, courts, etc. You name it, honestly. I can feel a manifesto festering inside of me. I’ve got some work to do.

This show scares me. I've gone to some provocative places, and I do that anyway in my work but this one feels scarier because I'm talking about dwarfism. I'm talking about the experiences, the lived experience of dwarfism, in a way. That is twisted. It is quite perverse and quite visceral as well. It makes sense for my work to come out with twists and discomfort because that’s been my experience.

What was it that made you sort of see the parallel perspective's residence and what particular attracted you to it?  

It's good to be able to have two environments where you can write and create. I loved being at ODAC - the people were great, the dogs were better. Genuinely. It was fantastic, and I would do it again, and I don't normally say that to people.

Without Parallel Perspectives, I wouldn't have been able to afford to work with the people that I ended up working with - Travis Alabanza and Debbie Hannan specifically. So that has made a huge difference to my work and the project as a whole.

And finally, what do you see for the future of Tam, Midgitte, and ‘Shooting from Below’?

Ooo. Maybe I’ll take the baby to Australia. We’ll do it over there. Then I’ll take the baby to Brazil. We’ll do it over there. We’ll get really famous, and then, let's say, 20 years from now. There'll be a baby ‘come back tour’ and I'll do it in New York.

More seriously… I guess we'll find out because this show is saying shit that I'm intrigued by, and I would love to see this show, and I know I’m hard to please. I see sell-out shows. I see myself getting stressed by trying to put all my pals on the cheap ticket list because all the salaried arts institutions…bastards (love them really: give us money) get the seats. I envisage, genuinely, meeting more and other people with dwarfism who are not conforming. It's probably a 16+ show but I’d love for young freaks of culture to see this in the future. I’d like the show to end with a riot that spills into the theatre bar, pours out into London streets, and gains traction on its way to the palace. I hear they like Midgittes there, plus it sounds like they need a pick-me-up.

Thank you to Tam for chatting with us about your week! with us We can’t wait to see it. Click here for tickets for Shooting From Below or here for more information about Parallel Perspectives with LEVEL Centre.