Site as Archive in Company SJ’s The Women Speak

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.