Rebecca Solomon and Nikki Charlesworth come together for their first independent collaboration after having seen the exciting potential of combining aerial circus and puppetry whilst working together on Splash! with Extraordinary Bodies.The idea that puppets can help tell untold and uncomfortable stories in an accessible way has led them to try and combine the two very stark disciplines in a period of research and development for new work Second Hand Child.
Jerwood New Work Fund will support Rebecca to take the lead in creating this new work, which is based around a series of letters, memories and thoughts to and from a daughter in adulthood and her birth mother, told through aerial circus and puppetry. It will think about her identity as a person adopted as a child, a woman of colour, at the same age as her birth mother at the moment she decides to give her child up. Exploring race relations, then and now, prejudice, isolation created by traditions and child raising without a support system, as well as identity.
