Domestica

Sleepwalk Collective ., Sleepwalk Collective

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781786823533
• eBook ISBN: 9781786823540
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

On a stage that might be a painting or a page torn from a book, award-winning live art and experimental theatre group Sleepwalk Collective present Domestica: a woozy, deadpan, and extensively-annotated dismantling of high art and classical posturing that seeks to destroy and subvert the idea that art and patriarchy are inexorably linked.

APPENDIX IV

ACTRESS

A PERFORMANCE TEXT

Written for Sleepwalk Collective

By Sammy Metcalfe

With iara Solano Arana

In 2015

Spanish translations by iara Solano Arana

Actress was made with Alex Fernandes

All self-effacement and self-consciousness aside, we’re really and honestly over the moon that this book exists and that you’re now reading it. And so by way of saying thank you here is the full text of Actress, a whole other show we made in 2015. It was in many ways a direct response to Domestica, partly in that the project was formally a kind of inversion – it was a small-scale solo piece that we made in just a few months – but also in that it picked up and re-worked a number of Domestica’s unfinished texts and ideas.

Shhhhhhhhh

Everybody’s ready

Everybody is waiting

I had a dream last night

In the dream I was a shadow or less than a shadow

And I carried a tray along an infinite buffet

Collecting a brain and a heart and hands and eyes and lips and a tongue

I was an empty shell that I could gradually fill up

The dinner ladies smiled behind their glass screens

And when I had my own mouth I smiled back at them

And as I put myself together

The world began to appear

Little by little

Like a jigsaw slowly completing itself

Like a wall of televisions switching on one at a time

The pictures appearing

The volume fading up

The world slid in through the new holes in my new face

Through the new pores in my new skin

And I slowly filled up inside

And when the world reached my lips

It began to spill back out again

Like a bath overflowing

Then like a fountain

And I put my hand over my mouth

To keep some of myself on the inside

I screwed my eyes closed tight and rubbed them

Like I was trying to wake from a deep sleep

And when I opened them again there you were right there

In front of me

And we took our places in the dark with everybody else

And I felt like one pair of eyes amongst a sea of eyes

One pair of ears amongst a sea of ears

And you squeezed my hand gently

And we fell into the light

Hello

How are you?

You’re looing very nice

Do you like my dress?

Can you hear me ok?

You’ve had quite a fall

How many fingers am I holding up?

And now?

Only kidding

You look so tired

You look so worn

Don’t worry

I’ll take care of you

Who will you be playing tonight?

You could be little children getting tucked into bed

Judges watching a dog doing tricks

A crowd of people watching an execution

Proud parents gathered around a crib

Surgeons gathered around a body with a hole in it

Scientists opening a box to see if the cat inside is alive or dead

Or only sleeping

The box opens

And inside the box there is a girl

And her mouth is already open

And her lips are already moving

And these words are already coming out

Hello

How are you?

I’m the actress

Waiting to be given a role to play

Like jelly waiting to be poured into a mould

Or like the Golem

The man made out of clay

Who could be brought to life by writing a word on a piece of paper

And putting it inside of his mouth

And it was as if the word spoke to him and through him

And the clay man lived for as long as the word was there

Inside his head

Inside of my head I have 45 minutes of words

That is all I have

That is how long I have to live for

Already the words are trickling away

Like sand through an hourglass

Like blood leaving a wound

I am like a hole

That the words must pass through

To get from wherever they’re coming from

To wherever they’re going

To you

Sister

Brother

Look at us

In space it is always nighttime

And the stars hang like tiny light bulbs in the distance

And there is no sound

And there is nothing to eat

And the night goes on and on as far as the eye can see

And as far as the...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• NOTES ON THE TEXT
• CONTENTS
• FIRST PANEL (2018)
• SECOND PANEL (1485)
• THIRD PANEL (1896)
• FOURTH PANEL (1821)
• FIFTH PANEL (1652)
• SIXTH PANEL (2012)
• SEVENTH PANEL (2018)
• APPENDIX I
• APPENDIX II
• APPENDIX III
• APPENDIX IV
• APPENDIX V