Marisa Carr (born 1 February 1971), who performs as Marisa Carnesky, is a British live artist and showwoman. She uses spectacular entertainment forms, including fairground devices and stage illusion, and draws on themes of contemporary ritual, to investigate social issues from an ecofeminist perspective. Time Out declared that Carnesky's 'unique niche of interactive end-of-the-pier esoterica has fused ghost trains, anatomical models and tattoo culture with religion, feminism and class consciousness in ways both playful and rewardingly demanding.''Carnesky's Tarot Drome', Time Out, 10 September 2012
Carnesky has won many awards, including the Laurence Olivier for Best Entertainment in 2004, Edinburgh Festival Herald Angel in 2005 and Time Out Best Theatre in 2004.Marisa Carnesky page at the University of Sheffield's National Fairground and Circus Archive
Training Carnesky studied ballet at London's West Street Ballet School (1987-8) followed by two years of a degree in Dance and Choreography at the Laban Dance Centre (1988–90). The Laban teachers told her that what she was doing 'was more performance art'.'Performance maker Marisa Carnesky: 'When faced with something I can't solve, I make a show about it' Giverny Masso, interview with Carnesky in The Stage, 30 October 2018 This led her, in 1990–3, to the University of Brighton, where she completed a Visual and Performing Arts degree taught by the choreographer Liz Aggiss. Aggiss recruited Carnesky into her company, Divas, which led to her first professional role, performing in 'Die Orchidee im Plastik Karton' in 1992.
Alternative burlesque In the 1990s, Carnesky moved to London where she worked in alternative burlesque. In 1994, she performed in, and was a deviser on, Robert Pacitti's Geek!Pacitti Company archive page on Geek! Her 1990s solo performances included the commission for Lady Muck and Her Burlesque Revue at the Now Festival Nottingham (1996), the Nine Breasted Woman at the Duckie Prom Night at the ICA (1997) and Mademoiselle Lefort in the St Valentine's Day Pleasure Parade under the Vauxhall Railway Arches (1998).Bruce Bailey, 'The Queer Carnival', University of Exeter PhD thesis, 2000 pp. 114-5 As a director and member of the Dragon Ladies troupe, including the late visual artist Amanda Moss, she co-created The Grotesque Burlesque Revue (1998) staged at Soho's Raymond Revue Bar. This was a surreal version of the Bluebeard story, featuring sailors, tattooed women, snakes, peacocks, and a woman transformed into a ship's mast, weeping 'tears of blood into the ocean'.Bruce Bailey, interview with Carnesky in 'The Queer Carnival', University of Exeter PhD thesis, 2000 p344
Carnesky also spent time in New York, where she posed for the performance artist Annie Sprinkle for her Pleasure Activist Playing Cards, and worked with the spoken word performer Jennifer Blowdryer in her Smut Fest, a live showcase of subversive sexual performance artists. She appeared in HBO's television series Real Sex and the 1998 TV documentary Showgirl Stories From Vaudeville to Vegas, directed by Agnieszka Piotrowska and narrated by Anjelica Huston.
Jewess Tattooess Carnesky's first full-length solo show, in 2000, was Jewess Tattooess, in which she explored the cultural and religious implications of being a heavily tattooed Jewess, breaking the religion's taboo against body art. It was while researching the work that she 'opted to reclaim the Latvian surname her grandmother had anglicised during the 1940s - Carnesky, fortuitously redolent of both carnival and the carnal.'Judith Palmer, 'Expensive Thrills', the New Statesman, 14 June 2004
Jewess Tattooess included storytelling, fairground illusions, films (by Alison Murray) and a soundtrack by David Knight, Katherine Gifford and James Johnston. The most striking element was the live tattooing of a Star of David and a dragon onto Carnesky's flesh. While planning the piece, she described it as 'a mixture of a play...with a real event, real blood, my whole body on the line in the show. While I'm being tattooed my breath will change, my emotions will change. I'll have a needle in my back and I'll be talking about my fears of being tattooed and being Jewish.'Bruce Bailey, 'The Queer Carnival', University of Exeter PhD thesis, 2000 p348
In Total Theatre, Dorothy Max Prior described Jewess Tattooess as 'a compelling piece of theatre informed by a visual arts sensibility; an expressionist dance merged with storytelling; a vaudeville entertainment that embraces the poetic. But above all a performance that invites the audience to witness the rite of passage from innocent childhood to informed womanhood.'Dorothy Max Prior, 'Jewess Tattoeess' review, Total Theatre, Spring 2001 Jewess Tattooess toured internationally and was staged at Battersea Arts Centre, the ICA, Riverside Studios, Arnolfini, Colchester Arts Centre, CCA Glasgow, Escena Contemporana, Spain; Ireland, Project Arts Centre; Cenpi, Croatia; Cultural Centre Serbia, Theatre Arsenic, Switzerland, Live Art – Kanonhallen, Denmark and the Los Angeles International Festival.List of works on Carnesky's website
C'est Barbican As part of Duckie, the 'post gay'Rupert Smith, 'Join the Club', The Guardian, 14 May 2002 performance collective, Carnesky co-created and starred in C'est Vauxhall in 2002, originally staged at the Vauxhall Tavern, and renamed C'est Barbican when it transferred there during Christmas 2003.Madeleine North, 'Duckies among the Luvvies', The Independent, 21 September 2003 The show won the 2004 Olivier award for Best Entertainment. Renamed C'est Duckie, it subsequently toured to Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Sydney (Opera House), Berlin, Tokyo, Kyoto and New York.
The Girl from Nowhere In 2003, Carnesky created The Girl from Nowhere, a collaboration with the magician Paul Kieve and Hilary Westlake, director of the experimental theatre group Lumiere and Son. Using filmed testimony and magic illusions, the piece retold Jewish and eastern European folktales and stories of migration, exploring similarities between migrant journeys from East to West.Girl from Nowhere, archive page on Carnesky's website The show was described by Dorothy Max Prior in Total Theatre as 'an evening of many pleasures perfectly executed.'Dorothy Max Prior, 'Marisa Carnesky, the Girl from Nowhere', Total Theatre, August 2003
Carnesky's Ghost Train Girl from Nowhere led towards Carnesky's best known and most ambitious work, Carnesky's Ghost Train, in 2004, which also took migrant journeys as its subject. Carnesky told the Telegraph, 'When you go on a ghost train you become displaced. Ghosts and ghost trains are all about being frightened and being disorientated.'Jasper Rees, 'Ghost train that's a work of art', The Telegraph, 2 August 2004
Carnesky's train was a 400-square-metre wide fairground ride, built in a disused car factory in Dagenham. The creative team comprised illusionist Paul Kieve, creative producer Jeremy Goldstein, video artist Jonathan Allen, set designer Laura Hopkins, musician Rohan Kriwaczek, sound designer Lance Dann and the performers Paloma Faith, Geneva Foster Gluck, Violetta Misic, Agnes Czerna and Tai Shani.
In The New Statesman, Judith Palmer described the piece as "part art installation, part visual theatre and part fairground ride - a purpose-built train whisking audiences 20 at a time through a magical environment of optical illusions and performance vignettes...In silk kimonos and jaunty tutus, a succession of powdered lovelies wafts silently in and out of our vision - reaching out through broken windows, floating above station platforms, sinking into the floor, or spinning in midair....women contorted into small spaces, cut in half, suspended between realities, lost between border crossings." In a four star review in the Guardian, Lyn Gardner described the rides as "a marvellous mix of technical wizardry and sheer heart and soul."Lyn Gardner, 'Carnesky's Ghost Train', The Guardian, 4 May 2004
The train toured the UK for five years, and had residencies at the Trumans Brewery in Brick Lane, Coventry City Centre, Glastonbury Festival and Zomer Van Antwerpen in Belgium. It then became a permanent attraction in Blackpool's Golden Mile, in collaboration with the Blackpool Illuminations, where it won the 2011 British Tourism Award. Reviewing the show in Blackpool, Libby Purves wrote in The Times: 'Combining a cultural classy edge with a lot of enjoyable screaming, Carnesky's Ghost Train is a passionate tribute to war scattered refugee ghosts. It was a success in London and is now even better, both more serious and more fun.'Libby Purves, 'Carnesky's Ghost Train', The Times
Magic War In 2007, Carnesky created Magic War, inspired by the French government's use of the stage magician, Robert Houdin, to suppress an uprising in Algeria in 1856. With dramaturgy from Lois Weaver and Flick Ferdinando, the show included stage magic from Paul Kieve, and costumes and props by Sarah Munro and Mark Copeland of the Insect Circus. Carnesky appeared as Athena the goddess of strategic war, reimagined as a stage magician performing illusions, accompanied by a male stage assistant, played by various actors.
In her Guardian review, Lyn Gardner described the piece as 'an intriguing look at war and violence, and the illusions to which we all fall prey....(It) combines magic, commentary and audience participation. One hapless audience member is cast as a terrorist and the audience asked to determine her fate based on a series of questions. There are serious points here about ethics and retribution, made all the more horrific when she is sent to the guillotine.'Lyn Gardner, 'Magic War', The Guardian, 2 November 2007
Teaching In 2008–11, Carnesky was artist in residence at the Roundhouse in London, where she established Carnesky's Finishing School, teaching performance skills to young people aged 17–21 over four semesters. In 2015–16, the school had a pop-up residency in the former Foyles building in Soho. Carnesky, assisted by Lisa Lee of Lipsinkers, offered students 'classes in esoteric PE, situationist clowning, unpopular expressionism and transmetaformism.'Carnesky's Finishing School page on the Crying Out Loud website The students were then taken through the process of devising, creating and performing their own work on stage in front of a paying audience. Graduates of the school include MisSa Blue, Laura Gwen Miles, Tallulah Haddon, Tom Cassani, Oozing Gloop, Amethyst Phoenixx and Oberon White.
In 2019, The Finishing School moved to the Tramshed in South East London, where it was renamed Carnesky's Radical Cabaret School. In 2022, Carnesky began leading a three year BA degree course in Contemporary and Popular Performance for the Rose Bruford College. The course, partly based in the Tramshed, "focuses on practical performance skills like magic, clowning, burlesque and wrestling, taught by cutting-edge practitioners."Carnesky's Radical Cabaret School, on Carnesky's websiteContemporary and Popular Performance BA, Rose Bruford College website
The National Fairground Archive From 2007–2010, Carnesky had a Creative and Performing Arts Fellowship at the National Fairground Archive in Sheffield University. In her honour, in 2011, the University 'presented a spectacular exhibition and a feast for the senses, Memoirs of a Showwoman.'The Marisa Carnesky Collection at the Fairground Archive, Sheffield Displays showcased costumes from Carnesky's shows, including the dress worn by Paloma Faith for Carnesky's Ghost Train, collaborative work with artists such as Anthony Bennett, Sarah Munro and Mark Copeland, and previously unseen material from her personal archive. The National Fairground Archive now holds a Marisa Carnesky Collection.
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