A series of attempts to take up space [working title]

Jennifer Jackson with Nickie Miles-Wildin and Kat Joyce

Circus, Dance, Theatre, Walkabout

A black-and-white photo from rehearsals. A performer is being lifted up by four other performers, with three performers spotting behind them.

A series of attempts to take up space [working title] is a playful and surreal outdoor show where a group of women will make increasingly bigger attempts at being visible in public spaces.

In a playful escalation of how our brains associate size/space with status and power, there will be wigs, shoulder pads, womanspreading, high heels, stilts, humongous dresses, wheelchairs rigged to fly and cherry pickers to take their women to Godzilla status. What starts with a single performer, will grow and grow, and in turn, the women will grow and grow, until they are so big we cannot ignore them. It is a playful examination of the intersection between disability and gender.

During the pandemic, the visibility/invisibility of certain bodies has been exaggerated and the digital body has emerged. Women continue to fight for space digitally, physically, aurally, and in recorded history. As the world opened up, disabled and shielding people have had to remain indoors for their “safety”. What we are witnessing is an erasure of these individuals from our society.

The work falls under the larger body of work Take Space, which includes the works Endurance, WRESTLELADSWRESTLE and Thank Heaven for Little Grrrls, for which she received a Jerwood Live Work Award.

About Jennifer Jackson, Nickie Miles Wildin and Kat Joyce

This performance is a collaboration between Jennifer, Nickie Miles Wildin, and Kat Joyce.

Jennifer Jackson is a Latinx Anglo-Bolivian theatre-maker, movement director/choreographer and performer. Raised in the Midlands via Bolivia, she makes work that interrogates the ways women and girls occupy space in society. Her work is cross-discipline and often plays with the idea of the sports spectacle.

Nickie Miles-Wildin was previously Associate Director, and head of new writing at Graeae Theatre Company. At Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester Nickie has worked as Young Company Programme Leader and Resident Assistant Director, part of the Regional Theatre Young Directors Scheme.

Kat Joyce is a director/producer/writer/scenographer who makes work using a variety of non-traditional, often collaborative approaches, at a range of scales. As Co-Artistic Director of physical theatre ensemble Tangled Feet she has directed nearly 30 shows, indoors and outdoors, across the UK and abroad.