Site as Archive in Company SJ’s The Women Speak

Abstract

This article focuses on Company SJ’s The Women Speak as performed at the National Ballroom, Dublin, in 2015, and explores how a space, including through social relations and through its position in a cultural landscape, can function as a form of archive when utilized as the site of a theatrical performance. The article investigates how Company SJ’s site-specific production (which features performances of Not I, Footfalls, Rockaby and Come and Go) functioned as a kind of archive, an archaeological record of human interaction, which was framed by the scenographic design to prompt and draw on the audience’s embodied responses.