The roller derby team I skate with – Plymouth City Roller Girls – has been approached by artist Beth Emily Richards to make a performance piece inspired by the history of skating in the city, called Rinkomania. We have quite a lot of performers on the team so are very up for this, as anybody who’s seen a bit of roller derby can probably imagine.

Here’s the team (I’m second from the left, bottom row):

Beth’s work as an artist is fascinating, in particular the way she uses re-enactment to interrogate ideas of authenticity and history. Her website www.bethemilyrichards.com documents some of her previous projects, including a re-enactment of a Houdini escape trick he performed in Plymouth in 1909.

Rinkomania was inspired by a roller skate plaque on the wall of boarded up pub The Phoenix, which I also mentioned in my own project Curious Plymouth in 2010. (Turns out I got my wish of a roller skating craze returning the city with the launch of roller derby later that year..)

Beth saw that plaque and then read Get Your Skates On, a book by historian Diana Lawer which documents the history of skating in the city, from 1874-1989.

At one point Plymouth had several skating rinks, including the biggest Victorian skate rink outside of London. Oh for those days again. According to the book, they were places of social revolution, where people could meet unfettered by the close attentions of chaperones.

So Beth, with us, is devising a new piece that explores some of this history and also some of the ways roller derby and the Riot Grrrl movement plays with and challenges gender roles and perceptions. We’re in rehearsal now and the final performance will hit Plymouth on Saturday, 21st July and involve all sorts of strange costumes and displays of skill.