Play Review: Model Behaviour by Issy Knowles

Yesterday afternoon, I had the great pleasure of seeing Model Behaviour, a one-woman play based on the protagonist’s experience of the modelling industry.

It’s an hour long with no break, and the set doesn’t change: a row of hard, cold, metal chairs with a sign saying ‘CASTING’ at the back. Any model will recognise this view – it’s what we see day in, day out as we race around town trying to get to our castings. You don’t have to be a model to see this play, but there are certain ‘in-jokes’ that we get right away, such as the power-play we constantly submit to…”Sit anywhere. Oh, not there. Can you move up? Can you move up again?” To the bag over-spilling with random potions and concealers, dropped in our haste to please. Issy is tall, toned, blonde and knock-out beautiful and can move with the gazelle-like grace of a supermodel but, again, we relate when she immediately switches to ‘uncoordinated giraffe on ice’ to pick up her stuff off the floor: most models are still gawky adolescents when the couture is taken off.

We’re at her final casting for fashion week – if she doesn’t get this one, she may be dropped by her agency – as she hasn’t got any others. We learn about how she got into modelling, the pressures she faces to stay thin, her misadventures in the industry and the fact that she can’t do anything else as this is her whole identity now.

So much of the play rang true to me, even if it didn’t chime with my own experience. For example, I didn’t really get bullied about my weight, but when her booker rings to check what she’s eaten I immediately recognise the physical reaction: she leaps up, paces, fiddles with her hair, looks down at her body as though the agency may have bugged the room with CCTV. I honestly still get heart attacks when I have a missed call from Bookings, even though they’re lovely – when I was at huge agencies you just never knew if you had booked a massive job (oh shit but I just ate cake), were going to get told off for not going to a casting you weren’t sent to, were going to have to rapidly get dressed and into central London in half an hour for a last minute HUGE audition…Or were going to be dropped. In terms of ‘fight or flight’ mode we are permanently in the latter, cos no one would be brave enough to fight if they want to keep their job.

I also related to how performative so much of Issy’s life had become. Becoming a model for one of the biggest agencies in the world at 15/16 teaches you that you need to become constantly amenable to everyone. Just like when being on a shoot, everything is performative: dating, sex, being unable to turn off that switch that says ‘but that isn’t a good angle for me.’ Eager to please, Issy’s character tries to assuage all the wrong people until she loses sight of who she was before modelling. I think a lot of models could relate to that.

We also see how easy it is to be manipulated into shooting nude or topless. Issy switches between OTT physical comedy, hard-hitting emotional moments and the blurred lines between thanks to her amazing physicality and acting ability and I was just really taken on the journey with her.

When I started Modeltypeface, I was shocked at the reaction. Fellow models seems to really feel validated by both my funny anecdotes as well as my more troubling stories and interviews. It’s a rarified industry and we often feel guilty about moaning about it, because we also feel so lucky to do it. Watching Model Behaviour, I understood how those readers felt. Vindicated by seeing their truths represented and a side to the industry: not the supermodel upper echelons or the crappy scam agencies…Just the standard model experience of grey areas, small daily disempowerments and a a constant forced optimism about that lucky break just around the corner…If only we change ourselves that little bit more.

Well done Issy, it was a huge achievement, incredibly written and acted and a lot of models felt really represented by it. If it’s on again, I’d urge anyone to go and see it!

Rebecca x