CHANGING IN PUBLIC: Addressing the invisibility of menopause for working women in South London, using scenographic practice and ethnography-based theatre

Menopause has until recently been somewhat of a taboo subject, particularly in the workplace where it is typically represented as a problem to be dealt with by individual women. Over the four-year timespan of this research project (2017-21) there has been a steadily increasing amount of media interest in menopause, mainly written by menopausal women themselves, which indicates both the timeliness of my research and its immediate relevance to the emerging discourse around all aspects of Menopause, specifically for working women. This is a cross-disciplinary practice-based PhD inquiry in Drama and Healthcare (Scenography and Menopause) which used ethnography-based theatre-making methods (Ethnotheatre) as a line of enquiry into Menopause for working women in the UK, geographically focused in South London. My Drama research is Scenography, emerging from my previous Theatre Design practice. The four scenographic performances staged the research questions, contextualised by literature and other performance practices, and the subsequent reflective analysis further developed the questions, which, in turn, became the foundations for the next performance. The first performance Prólogos (June 2017) was a short site-specific performance at St Mary’s University. The second performance employed both scenographic and ethnotheatre methods (verbatim use of interview material) to create Puzzled, shown at Croydon Council’s Diversity Awareness Conference (April 2018). Women of Brockwell (missing statue), the third performance (June 2019) was a public installation in Brockwell Park, South London. The final performance (January 2020) synthesised both scenography and ethnotheatre outcomes into a theatre production CHANGING IN PUBLIC in St Mary’s University Theatre. This investigation has used a ‘bricolage’ of research methods, employing ethnographic methods of interviewing (spoken, written and visual) as the tools from which to create scenographic ethnotheatre, using ‘make-reflect-remake’ iterative cycles to develop the practice, which has been further refined into ‘make-reflect-re-contextualise-remake’. The questions for my research are concerned with public expressions of the menopause (both cultural and personal) and how a form of applied scenography can be extended to develop an ethnography-based performance within a post-dramatic theatre framework, allowing for a primary language of visuals and other sensory experiences to engage the spectator, rather than privileging the dramatic text. My research deals with real world cross-disciplinary problem-solving and the practice outcomes represent a new direction for Scenography and Ethnotheatre.