Five Dresses I Never Wear

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 their 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). Rita Suszek was then shortlisted for VAULT Five; the play was accepted as a full-length scratch performance to the, later cancelled, VAULT Festival of 2022 and is now scheduled for further development and performance in 2023. 

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Creative team:

Lead Artist: Rita Suszek

Director: Olga Macrinici

Dramaturg: Tanaka Mhishi