About the work

Rheums was conceived, performed and produced in each room of my home between 2019 and 2021 and documents the grieving process in the aftermath of two significant events. 

This work explores how the rooms in one's mind can expand into the rooms of one's house. It’s about those rooms moving between being a set of cages and a series of stages on which to play out and understand layers of self. 

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Rheums is a product of arts-based research, conducted through various visual communication methods guided by narrative inquiry and auto ethnography. It investigates how experimental approaches to creating autobiographical song, film and writing can lead to outcomes fit for both academic and entertainment contexts. 

 

I set out to explore ways to maintain a therapeutic, sincere and critically robust research process in order to engage with audience through performance. The aim was to evoke stories and experiences that belonged to me yet also to anyone. To play with the blurring of the real and the imaginary to see if that could help get closer to truth.

 

This project began as a web-based performance in response to COVID-19 restrictions during 2020 and became a live performance involving musicians and audience participation in 2022. 

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 - Lucy Bergman

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