Directed by Faye Guy, written and assistant directed by Charlotte Cromie, and with choreography by Finn Morrell and Jack Bentinck from Cambridge-based theatre company Temper Theatre, Iphis was the Week 4 Corpus Lateshow in Lent Term 2016.

On the night before her wedding, Iphis and her mother, Telethusa, go to the temple of Isis to ask for help. Iphis has spent her life pretending to be a boy to escape her murderously misogynistic father Ligdus, but then she became engaged to a woman, Ianthe. And she did not just become engaged – she fell in love. Isis’ response is to physically transform Iphis into a man. It seems like the ideal solution to everyone except Iphis, whose eyes have been opened to the injustice of her situation, and who will not be silenced.

How did you go about portraying your characters?

Xanthe Burdett (Female Iphis): I tried to focus on expressing the internal struggle. The feeling of conflict between how I was seen by the world around me and how I saw and understood myself.

Ben Martineau (Male Iphis): The biggest challenge was combining Iphis' intelligent, rebellious, and compassionate background with the vulnerability and belligerence she displays at times during the play (as well as the occasional streak of madness). It would have been easy (and I think wrong) to focus on how to portray ‘a woman in a man's body’. Instead I tried to imagine the more general feeling of being utterly uncomfortable in my own skin, the feeling of wanting to pull it off, to step outside of yourself.

Myfanwy Hill (Telethusa): I tried to think about similar challenges that a parent might face now. Obviously gender dysphoria, homosexuality and transgender issues are still very current, and ‘coming out’ to ones family remains a big challenge for many people. It can be hard to portray the struggle someone might have accepting a loved one, without coming across as narrow minded or bigoted. I wanted to portray the incomprehension of a mother dealing with concepts of identity totally alien to her. I wanted her anger and confusion to come from a place of love and fear for her child, not a place of hate.

Isla Cowan (Ianthe): It was important with Ianthe to portray not only her youth and energy – showing her intense love for Iphis – but also her immense strength. She is outraged and confused by Iphis' secret. This was challenging at times because homosexual love does not shock or confuse me, but was an unknown concept in the temporal setting of the play, so I had to work hard to place myself within that mindset. At the end of the day, though, Iphis did lie to her and betray her, and she is hurt and angry. In the second half of the play that comes through so I tried to bring out her more domineering side. She is not naïve; she is intelligent despite her youth, and in the end capable of accepting something beyond her understanding, a narrow understanding her society has enforced.

 

What was it like working with the Temper Theatre choreographers?

Xanthe: Completely freeing!

Myfanwy: They made us think about our bodies and movement in totally new ways. As actors, it can be easy to spend a lot of time thinking about gestures, facial expressions and voice, but to neglect the importance of expressing yourself through total body movements. They helped us think about the raw emotion of the scenes and taught us ways of exploring the text with our bodies, not just our minds. Plus, they are just really incredible guys. They made us laugh a lot! I'll take what I’ve learned from them into every part I play in the future!

Ben: Absolutely brilliant. Delivering not only the stunning choreography, they helped us drag absolutely every ounce of character out of ourselves. They were always enthusiastic, leaping in, unfailingly energetic.

 

Q: What were the highlights of working on this play?

Faye:  This has been such an incredible process, especially because I'd been preparing for it for so long, so the last three weeks of rehearsals have been so wonderful. Working with such a talented cast and crew has made it thoroughly enjoyable, and Finn and Jack (the Temper Theatre guys) took my ideas for the physical sequences and made them into something stunning. I couldn't be happier with how this show has turned out.

Xanthe: Exploring the physical with Temper Theatre was definitely a highlight. The process of discovering a character through the body was challenging and illuminating.

Isla: It was amazing to be working on something so new. Charlotte was able to adjust her script to fit the actors – for example, a line that used to be about Ianthe's height was changed to be about her accent. It was also new in that it has been constantly exciting and experimental, especially working with Temper Theatre.

Ben: Agreed. It was also an absolutely incredible cast and crew – everyone was so enthused about the project. Getting to grips with the complex characters was also a superb challenge – every night felt like a slightly new interpretation.