A Song to Sing, a Tale to Tell, a Point to Make

Description:

A song to sing, a tale to tell, a point to make was a solo performance by Colette Urban based on memories and fictions of her childhood. The work was inspired by the essay “How to Write a Story” in the book Hundreds of Things a Girl Can Make (1945). This text, which exposes the gendered biases of the publishing industry, runs throughout the performance as a voice-over narration. The tone of defeat embedded in the essay is mirrored and intensified in Urban’s physical presence: an adult woman wearing a child’s dress with nonfunctioning extended arms, and her mouth gagged. At its core, the performance probes the gendered conditioning of a female child and the enduring implications of that conditioning in the contemporary world.