Research Question

How is the Mother archetype re-figured in performance through its juxtaposition with the mythical anti-mother Medea and experiential accounts of motherhood?

What happens when performance brings together the universal (archetypal and mythical) and the lived social realities of motherhood?

Context

In Medea/Mothers' Clothes the maternal archetype is revisited through myth, a local community of mothers from Liverpool , and myself as mother and live artist.

In seeking to portray my autobiographical experiences of motherhood and my personal connections to a group of contemporary mothers, I intervene in the cultural mythmaking of Medea.

The mythical anti-mother Medea and the lives of local mothers (including myself) are all constrained by the social roles and cultural imaginings of maternity.

In searching for a reassessment of maternity and womanhood the universal (mythical and archetypal) is discharged through the individual (specific/local) and the experiential (autobiographical).

My exploration of archetypes is framed by feminist archetypal criticism, autobiography, poststructuralism (deconstruction) and performance art / live art.

Methodology

• Autobiography signals my personal investment in live art and performative writing. ‘Authority of Experience' is tightly connected to my creativity. In order to subvert the Mother Archetype, I need an authoritative personal voice of the lived anxiety of experience. In this particular piece I draw on motherhood and my sense of ‘being foreign': of being connected to the idea of being seen as ‘Other'.
  
  
• Intimacy is the method through which autobiography is articulated: the way in which the artist uses creative material (performative writing, Medea text, self, mothers, clothing objects on stage) to convey the art piece and to achieve a personal relation with audiences/readers.

In Medea/Mothers' Clothes I am the nexus between mothers and Medea. I do not play Medea, I play with Medea. In respect of the mothers, I am both a mother , belonging to the particular group I am exploring and an outsider – artist-anthropologist – observing objects/subjects.

My voice and view is personal and autobiographical.