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Dohter/Daughter : Practice-led enquiry directed by Jill Greenhalgh examining how the intimacy and complexity of the mother daughter dyad might be authentically presented – as opposed to represented – as performance by devising and exploring an evolving dramaturgical structure that could engage female performers from the locality of its sites manifestation and thus allow each staging its distinct cultural and political inflection.

Theatre performance (45mins): directed by Jill Greenhalgh

Touring internationally:

Chapter Arts Centre – Cardiff. 26.08.2011

SESC – Canupe, Florianopolis, Brazil. 8.07.2012

Teatro SESC Garagem. Brasilia, Brazil. 16.09.2012

Teatros del Canal, Sala Negra, Madrid, Spain. 9.9.2013

Research questions:

•How might the intimacy and complexity of the mother daughter dyad be authentically presented – as opposed to represented – as performance?

•How might intimacy be staged for an audience in the public domain?

•How might intimate and personal women’s histories and memories find appropriate exposition within the public domain?

•What effective strategies and structures can be developed and identified to encourage the telling of mother/daughter autobiographies?

The central aim of the practice-led enquiry was to test performance as a viable forum for reflection upon the psycho/physical complexities of distinct mother/daughter dyads.

The ambition was also to devise and explore an evolving dramaturgical structure that could engage and include female performers from the locality of its sites of investigation and manifestation and thus allow each staging its distinct cultural and political inflection.

This project was developed in four distinct performance experiments convened, completed and tested/performed in the public domain. In each instance, the working period lasted between five and ten days and four to eight hours per day, with groups of ten women performers aged between 18 and 70. Each performer also worked privately for one hour per day with a partner: whenever possible and appropriate, this was their daughter or mother.

This enquiry continues and extends the researcher’s long-term international investigation into staging of the owned and authentic voice, and embodied knowledge intrinsic to women’s experience. It also furthers her investigation into the aesthetic devices – combinations of soundtrack, scenic emplacement, textual exposition and physical action - appropriate for such explication.