Spaces for ambiguities: playing with hair in community theatre for teenage girls

Abstract

This article concerns how the normative matter of body hair is playfully encountered within a theatre practice for teenage girls. By working with Deleuzian-inspired theories, playfulness is understood as embodied doings, interwoven with the local context. The article explores how playfulness is enacted in relation to the everyday, in particular body hair removal. The analysis shows how playfulness is an ambiguous feature enacted together with bodies, affects and materialities. Moreover, playfulness became both a restricting and a transformative force reproducing the already known while also opening up a critical approach of playing with the violent aspects of hair removal.