Wig Show began as a collaboration and co-production between Tract and Touch and Robin Dingemans and Andra Faglar (and Other Birds). Bonenfant was asked to make a performance that could tour to children and families with the installation Curious Replicas. Dingemans had been exploring progressive aesthetic experiences for children in contemporary dance for some time. Together, they decided to make a voice-dance performance that included call and response with the audience of children, so that the performers could invite these audiences into voice and gesture. Wig Show was born, and ends with the entire audience being invited on stage to try out wigs. As part of the Voice Styling strand of research-creation explorations, we wanted to find ways to invite children to both witness, and experience, the voice as something as malleable, as changeable, and as style-able as hair. We wanted to invite these audiences to explore the agency they have to invent themselves, and to experience identity as a series of choices, rather than a series of prisons, for a performance hour. The piece was developed and tested with audiences in Stockholm, London and Cork through 2018-19-20, to maximise its interactivity, and versions were developed for children roughly aged 4-6 and then 7 and above. The formal premiere in Stockholm was interrupted by Covid, and to cap off the process temporarily we made the Wig Show Workouts for teachers to use in Covid-time classrooms. We are greatly indebted to the artist Harold Offeh’s project Hairography which inspired this work.

A co-production and co-creation with: Robin Dingemans and Other Birds, Stockholm. Performed Robin Dingemans, Anna-Helena McLean. Artistic direction and voice-a-turgy by Yvon Bonenfant. Artistic direction and choreography by Robin Dingemans. Devising contribution by Anna-Helena McLean. Produced by Mary Paterson. Documentation courtesy the Tract and Touch Trust. Funders: Arts Council England. Stockholm City. Stockholm County. Swedish Arts Council. Supported by venues The Place (London); Weld (Stockholm). Additional support from University of Winchester (UK) and University College Cork (IE).