About

Brighton Festival: Charlotte Spencer - Written in the Body

Two women delve into their personal and shared memories. They reveal their histories of tactile encounters with people, places and environments – the funny ones, the weird ones. The really not so good ones.

Written in the Body is a duet about memory, touch and consent.

It’s a sometimes joyful, sometimes confronting experience as we go on a journey with the performers. Sometimes, their words come tumbling out and connect with our own stories. Sometimes, there is nothing to say. Then, their bodies do the speaking.

Physical contact holds communities together. What do we lose when this disappears?

This new dance piece will bathe you in sensation, washing over you and through you – in focus or drifting. It was imagined long before COVID-19 changed our understanding of touch and how people connect with each other. And yet, here we are, re-learning how to relate socially, physically and emotionally. Rebuilding our sense of ourselves.

Following a decade of creating performances in unusual outdoor spaces nationally and internationally, acclaimed company Charlotte Spencer Projects return to theatre to ask new questions and start new conversations about who we are. Step into and embrace the transformative world of Written in the Body.

World Premiere

Commissioned with Brighton Festival, Sadler’s Wells and South East Dance. Research funded by The Place, Wellcome Collection, Siobhan Davies Studios, Bonnie Bird Choreography Fund and Arts Council England.

In Brighton, co-presented by Brighton Festival, Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts and South East Dance.

Rehearsal space supported by University of Sussex, Drama Department.

Find out more about this project from the artist in an interview with Brighton Festival:

Behind the scenes with Charlotte Spencer