Five Dresses I Never Wear (Work in Progress)

This is a solo show about femininity and trauma. It is about how patriarchy shapes us and what we become as we strive to disobey. It is about pain travelling through bodies and voices – about words that hurt and silences that haunt. It is a family story, no longer kept in the family.

You will meet five personalities embodied by the dresses. They each have a story and a voice; they are all dealing with feminine programming as well as a thread of trauma that connects them, and the family, in painful, unhealthy ways. Maybe together we can lay some ghosts to rest.

Five Dresses… was shown as a 20-minute scratch performance at Camden People’s Theatre (Calm Down, Dear 2018). Another excerpt was performed at Bedlam Festival in Birmingham in November 2021 (supported by Centrala). The VAULT Festival performance is a work in progress and will be the premiere of the full text.