Marie in the Margins
An ExploreTheArch project. This touring video installation sees three contemporary women working in the creative industries explore their cultural forebears- one of England's earliest known female writers, pioneering 12th century adventure writer Marie de France, and the forgotten workforce of female scribes and illustrators who would have worked alongside her.
In the film visual artist Yasmin Aishah, graphic designer Erica Smith and I each explore our own relationship to Dame Marie and to several of the female characters in her lai stories.
To support the film, a programme of engagement activities with young people is underway. This has included a series of creative workshops for children hosted at Hastings Museum. Children imagined the space as an abbey where they experienced scribing, illustration, writing, puppetry and music. In doing so they connected contemporary creative practice to medieval equivalents, shining a light on working women from history.
Director: Gail Borrow
Cinematographer: Rod Morris
Composer: Ruby Colley
Editor: Sarah Gomes Harris
Performers: Yasmin Aishah, Hannah Collisson and Erica Smith
Earthed (ExploreTheArch)
In this site specific promenade theatre piece, Yasmin Aishah and I explore our multiple identities via the introspection that pervaded our childhoods. Both creating personal and magical garden spaces in which to reflect quietly on the known and unknown of relatives, residences and ritual from our mixed heritage. Audiences are taken on a journey through memories and imagined spaces.
Iraq, Ghana, Belize, New Zealand, the UK,
Distance and boundaries merged,
Poetic worlds emerged.
Inspired by the protagonist of Rumer Godden's 1972 Whitbread Prize winning novel, The Diddakoi, Kizzy Lovell: a child who loves to live in the garden.
Director: Gail Borrow
Stage Engineer: @poorlybeetle
Performers: Yasmin Aishah and Hannah Collisson
