"How would you feel if you grew up knowing that your mother had been executed for murder as soon as you had been born? Through the mediums of storytelling, song, puppetry and physical theatre, Mater Matris explores a girl's desire to discover her mother's true nature."

 

Currently I am working on the show Mater Matris with Black Widow Theatre Company. This will be my final show at Falmouth University. Black Widow are: Tamsin Stone, Natalie Goodacre, Jenny Tripp, Rosie Reeve and Peter Holmes.

 

As I have been interested in storytelling throughout my time at university I am keen to produce a final piece that truly explores a variety of storytelling methods. Mater Matris tells three stories. The first story is adapted from a play called Fatal Curiosity, the second is based on a Cornish superstition about church bells and the third is based on Mary Ann Cotton- a notorious murderer.

 

We wanted to explore the idea of the female murderer so each tale is about a woman who is traitorous or murders members of her own family. The piece is framed by Mary Ann Cotton's daughter who is curious about who her Mother was, and after growing up with adopted parents she goes back to her biological Mother's house to sort through her possessions and shed light on who her mother was. While doing this she discovers letters and diary entries that tell stories of murder and betrayal and take her closer to finding out why her Mother was executed and who she truly was. 

 

The piece is told with puppetry, song, physical theatre and narration. We are interested in playing with perspective and drawing the audience’s eyes to small details on stage and then switching to larger spectacles. To truly explore this we have incorporated a toy theatre that tells the entire second story about Cornish wrecking superstitions. The characters are played by both puppets and performers to create a contrast between the two.

 

After researching ship wrecking we discovered there are many superstitions attached to it. We wanted to play on the theme that behind every disaster there is a woman- so we adapted these superstitions so that a woman was really causing the ships to wreck herself. These superstitions included bells ringing and wine glasses ringing and we found this extremely interesting and as a result both feature throughout the piece.

 

We are keen to incorporate music as a mode of storytelling so the piece includes many songs that are used to create atmosphere, establish mood and drive the story forward.

 

Mater Matris will be performed on June 6th at 3pm at Falmouth University Performance Centre as part of the 2014 AMATA Festival. More details here:

 

http://www.falmouth.ac.uk/degreeshows2014/amata-festival

 

Check out the music from Mater Matris below!!