BED

Abstract

In BED David Slater describes the genesis of a street theatre work jointly created by a group of older women living in South East London, all members of the participatory arts company Entelechy Arts. It traces how a company of seventy and eighty-year olds, made a performance work in response to feelings of invisibility experienced when going about their day to day lives in south east London, describing how they had felt that their stories and those of their peers, often living in loneliness and isolation, were not heard, valued or recognised. The resulting work, BED, initially designed for performance in a local street market, subsequently found itself touring to festivals and events across the UK and was later commissioned by Southbank Centre in London and the Saitama Arts Theatre in Japan.

The article describes and celebrates a complex cultural ecology balancing on an edge between art, social care and everyday life, that has been created in one south London Borough to propagate new artistic practices; processes that have enabled engagement with radical arts practice to become both an ordinary and extraordinary part of the day to day lives of older (often isolated), residents. It outlines the co-productive processes and methodology that underpinned the joint creation of BED collectively by artists engaging with theatre and performance work for the first time in their lives in their seventies and eighties. It describes the ambition of the older creators to capture the truth and authenticity of their generation’s lived experience in the creation of a work intent on taking people by surprise, challenging perceptions and uncovering hidden narratives.