Louise Orwin is a performance

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage (in both everyday speech and academic discourse) refers to a practitioner in the visual arts o ...

who makes research-based performance and video projects about what it means to identify as a

queer ''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are non-heterosexual or non- cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against LGBTQ people in the late 19th century. From the late 1980s, queer activists began to ...

femme ''Femme'' (; , literally meaning ) is a term traditionally used to describe a lesbian woman who exhibits a feminine identity or gender presentation. While commonly viewed as a lesbian term, alternate meanings of the word also exist with some ...

, in a world that prizes masculinity, straightness and whiteness. A performer-playwright who uses writing, live performance and video, Orwin has created several theatre shows that have toured internationally to performance spaces, galleries and festivals.

Career

Louise Orwin at the 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe

''A Girl and A Gun'' 2016 toured the

Edinburgh Fringe Festival The Edinburgh Festival Fringe (also referred to as the Edinburgh Fringe, the Fringe or the Edinburgh Fringe Festival) is the world's largest performance arts festival, which in 2024 spanned 25 days, sold more than 2.6 million tickets and featur ...

in 2016. ''The Norwich Radical'' reviewed Louise's show when it toured to NorwichArtsCentre "The brilliance of Orwin’s piece: a play without a narrative, but driven by an over-arching narrative that is so blindingly obvious we never thought to question it." ''Oh Yes Oh No'' - 2017 - 2019 LondonTheatre1 reviewed the show in 2017 giving it 4 stars. "Louise Orwin’s ''Oh Yes Oh No'' is certainly a piece to be talked about… once you’ve found the words." Orwin draws from recorded interviews with victims which were then played out throughout the performance. Mike Levy from ''The Cambridge Critique'' stated "These disembodied voices contributed to the stunning tapestry of sound and light. It was as I said a tough watch". During 2020 Orwin created an online digital work, ''Ur Favourite Scary Movie''. Giving 4 stars by ''The Crumb'', London, Isabelle Tyner reviewed the work, "Orwin confronts many traditions of scary movies, naming the cliches and plots of ones that came before". Tyner concluded that "with gritty spoken word and detailed sound effects ''Ur Favourite Scary Movie'' provides a refreshing perspective on horror, as well as a psychological journey". In 2024, Orwin brought a show called ''Famehungry'' to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which was a multi-media commentary on the quest for attention on Tiktok.

Theatre shows

* 2013 ''Pretty Ugly'' * 2015 ''A Girl and A Gun'' * 2017 - 2019 ''OH YES OH NO'' * 2018 ''CRY CRY KILL KILL'' * 2024 ''Famehungry''

Digital work

* ''Ur Favourite Scary Movie''

Personal life

Orwin lives in London.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Orwin, Louise Living people 20th-century British women writers British women writers 21st-century British actresses British women dramatists and playwrights Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) Writers from London