The Old Days

This practice as research output was made with participants in Cyrff Ystwyth and in particular company member Lucy Smith. The work responded to her desire to create a live performance that drew on her childhood memories. Drawing on past experience that informs the adult self the output posited questions about how people with learning disabilities might experience and manage familial love and attachment and then proceed to individuation as adults. The work drew attention to issues of desire, anger, romance and sexuality. Popular culture offers images and role models yet how does a person constructed as marginalised from social norms and vulnerable on those margins, mobilize such cultural tropes. The work considered the social power of such expectations to find someone and raise one’s own family with the deeper knowledge that this remains far from reach or realisation. The allure and comfort of the fairy tale romance was linked closely with the darker side of such representations of the ideal; anger, jealousy and possession were threaded through allusions to violence and lack. Theatrical techniques and the appearance of the individuals in public through these techniques formed the methodological ground. The issues raised within the process and final outcome were embedded within the dramaturgical form and made available to audiences via performance.