The Enchanter’s Nightshade

Mud Oven Afternoons, Edinburgh Arts Festival 2019

My work in this performance looks at the disruption, narratives and images when womxn of colour inhabit natural spaces, specifically when we are in nature, in the outdoors and also in Scottish Gardens.  In thinking around the loss within people's imagination in seeing us in the natural landscape, this performance is an expression around ways to reclaim these spaces and ‘plant seeds’ and new narratives in the audience. 

The Enchanter’s Nightshade takes its name from a common ‘weed’  or wildflower. It invites the audience to take company with ‘weeds’ often considered as unwanted and out of place, to think about disturbance as a transformative way of arriving and attending to life.



This performance  was held at Johnston Terrace Nature Reserve, Edinburgh,  the smallest wildlife garden by Patrick Geddes.
I was also joined by Jessica Brough who reads from their essay, Erotic Computer from The Bi-ble: An Anthology of Personal Narratives and Essays about Bisexuality. The text is about Janelle Monae, Audre Lorde and the erotic. 
 

In thinking about the Enchanter’s Nightshade, I had taken some time alone in residency at The Bothy on the Isle of Eigg and worked with Eclipse Theatre on audience development for the show, Black Men Walking, that turns a spotlight onto Britain’s missing histories told through a  black men's walking group in Sheffield.

‘Though we are written into the landscape you don’t see us.’