SHE BUT NOT HERSELF 2015

A LECTURE PERFORMANCE EXPLORING THE CURIOUS AND INTIMATE EXPERIENCE OF BELONGING

AND BEING LEFT OUT 

Drawing on personal narrative and a family's multi-generational experience of immigration, She But Not Herself (working title) explores the curious and intimate experience of belonging and being left out. The piece examines the effects of the transnational movement of peoples on the formation of identity, as represented through the lens, and family history, of a Polish-Italian American immigrant living in Denmark - and her Danish husband.

 

Through the actual and metaphorical mapping of a life, as well as larger patterns of human migration, She But Not Herself invites us to consider what it means to be "at home". Told through a mix of English and Danish, the work also engages with the central role of language in the identity crisis that often results from immigration. The performance texts come from found material, theory, interviews and original writing in response to Ole Fogh Kirkeby's Hvem Er Jeg? - Om Sjælens Billeder and Sarah Ahmed's Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality. 

 

As the lecture performance develops, connections emerge, theatrical gestures are introduced, and choreographies are assembled, resulting in an auto-fictional narrative about the complexities of migration and the construction of identity, individuals and collectivity.

 

She But Not Herself was initiated as part of a PaR project at The Danish National School of Performing Arts - Odsherred in 2014 and portions of a work-in-progress version were shown in Odsherred in 2015. Additional material has been workshopped at Copenhagen University.

 

 

Concieved, directed and written by: Katrina Bugaj

Additional text: Sarah Ahmed, Michael Jackson, David Morely, Ole Fogh Kirkeby 

Performers: Katrina Bugaj, Troels Hagen Findsen

Voice-over: Anne Gry Henningsen, Rasmus Malling Lykke Skov, Petrine Agger 

Additional Performers (workshopped material): Petrine Agger, Martin Ammundsen, 

Anne Nyboe Kristensen, Conni Humeniuk

Video: Saskia Bisp 

Consultant: Vibeke Wrede