10/22/2014 Cultural journey leads to unexpected destination | Herald Scotland

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Wednesday 22 October 2014
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Cultural journey leads to
unexpected destination
Wednesday 22 October 2014
On paper, Rosana Cade had a pretty good idea of what she wanted to explore in her new solo show,
Lady Fingers and Empire Biscuits.
However, within hours of arriving in India to research and devise the work, that piece of paper was
scrunched up and Cade's thoughts began to go into freefall.
Plans had, in fact, been turned upside down before she even left Glasgow.
"Originally, I was meant to be working with an artist over there," she explains. "We were intending to
explore 'deviant' women in different cultures - but a week before my funding came through, she said she
couldn't do it. At more or less the same time, they recriminalised homosexuality in India. I hadn't been
intending to go to one of the Commonwealth countries where homosexuality was illegal - but somehow, I
just felt I couldn't ignore it."
There speaks the artist whose work draws creative energy from the fact she's a lesbian, even when the
issues she brings on-stage are of universal relevance.
It was back to the drawing board. Delving into the history of India's attitudes to homosexuality, Cade
discovered criminalisation had come in under British rule.
"I started thinking about Britain's impact on India in terms of the sexual legacy of colonialisation," she
continues. "And because Glasgow was hosting the Commonwealth Games - and my project was part of
Culture 2014 - I decided that I would go to India and make that the starting point for the piece. And then I
went to India..." Cade can't help laughing, even though at the time it felt as if her whole journey was about
to come to nothing. "Talking with gay people I met, I realised that the whole business of the British Empire
was completely irrelevant to them. They're campaigning in the here and now for gay rights - I felt I'd arrived
like some relic of colonialisation myself."
Even so, she went ahead with the meetings and interviews she'd already set up in Mumbai and Delhi.
She'd travelled in India before, but this time it felt different. Why? Pondering that has become the leverage
for the show that opens at the Arches this week. The notion that Victorian values - imposed by legislation
in 1860 - could still affect India has become the basis for what Cade describes as "a kind of colonial
lecture" at the start of her performance. It's really a foil for what follows, and that is centred on the sentient
self - the body that has its own laws, its own dictats, that demand to be followed even if they are in direct
opposition to the prevailing legal strictures.
"I had never felt so 'other' in my life before," says Cade. "Sitting in a Gay Bombay meeting - 40 Indian gay
men and me - I was so aware of being the only white British person in that room. It wasn't to do with
sexuality. Narratives around sexuality are very similar all across the world, there wasn't anything 'mystical'
about India - everyone talks about coming out, their families, the workplace, just as they do here. And that
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10/22/2014 Cultural journey leads to unexpected destination | Herald Scotland
http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts-ents/stage/cultural-journey-leads-to-unexpected-destination.25654684?utm_source=www.heraldscotland.com&utm_ 2/3
was where I felt familiarity. So where was this feeling of 'difference' coming from?"
The question had to be put on the back burner, however. Cade and her sibling, Amy, were performing at
the Fringe in Sister, their personal exploration of female sexuality that used autobiographical details with a
naked candour that went beyond the physical into private matters, such as personal choices, family history
and sexual preferences. Sister confronted audiences with the flesh and blood reality of two sisters who
were different in so many ways - Amy is a sex worker, Rosana a radical lesbian - but who were side by
side in a shared feminism.
Perhaps performing Sister day after day created a mindset that encouraged all the Indian source material
to fall into place, even if that place wasn't the one Cade had envisaged.
"It's been incredibly challenging to know what I'm doing and I've now allowed that to become part of the
show," she says. "I'm using that experience of 'otherness' and familiarity to look at other tensions: between
tradition and change, between the formal and legal and the carnal, the body.
"It's very easy for outsiders to see India only in terms of poverty, or as somehow disadvantaged compared
to the West, but there are other sides. Their attitudes to transgender people, for instance. Would
passengers on the Glasgow subway feel it was good luck to have a transgender person come up and touch
them? I really don't think so. We don't accept the reality of a third sex, India does.
"In the end, I think, my journey wasn't only about discovering how life in India is for homosexuals because
of the laws; it was much broader because, despite the legislation we have here, we still have homophobia.
People have problems with understanding difference. You don't need to go to India to feel 'otherness' - but
you can, and I did, feel totally connected to the issues of sexual identity I found there."
Lady Fingers and Empire Biscuits is at Arches, Glasgow, from tomorrow to Saturday and is part of
Glasgay!
NEXT: Arts News
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