REST
Inspired by the 1892 feminist novella The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, this 60 minute drama uses hand balancing, partner acrobatics, dance trapeze and aerial fabric to explore themes of women’s mental health and agency over the female body. The original novella focuses on a woman’s mental breakdown while on prescribed “rest cure” in a summer mansion, trapped in a room with no stimulation except the yellow wallpaper around her. Her descent into madness culminates with her belief that there is a woman trapped behind the wallpaper.
Bringing this story into the modern world, REST uses circus as a physical language of expression and walls as a unique apparatus, and we invite audiences into an immersive experience that brings them into the protagonist’s world of isolation, anger and madness - a world where sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.
Emily Hughes in REST, workshop performance Dec 2019, photo by Lori Ryerson
Original Concept: Brittany Howlett
Direction/Dramaturgy: Jessie Fraser
Creation: Brittany Howlett, Emily Hughes & Jessie Fraser
Choreography: Brittany Howlett & Emily Hughes
Currently in development with generous support from The Canada Council for the Arts.
