The representation of absence: costume scenography of mid-life women

The paucity of life narratives in film, television and for stage productions focused on women between the ages of 45 and 60 years has led many of these women to experience a sense of having become invisible. To address this phenomenon, I instigated a cycle of four performances staged between 2017 and 2020. Ideas were developed across the whole cycle and also for each performance. In this article I refer throughout to one performed costume scenography in June 2019, in a South London park. As the scenographer who wrote, directed and designed the perfor- mance, I will be discussing the whole process of creation, the subversive elements and how the blurring of boundaries fostered the audience engagement. This discussion includes the context, the development and experimentation with ideas; the interviews that I made with mid-life women using a Photo-Elicitation method, and the realised performance itself. Audience responses captured on the day, formed the data analysis for the final reflection on the achievements of the work.