Birdcage Thursdays

In Birdcage Thursdays, an adult daughter navigates the mounting chaos of bureaucracy, family trauma, and looming displacement, as her ageing mother resists every step toward an impending housing inspection. The story unfolds in a home, where belongings pile up and tensions simmer under the weight of memory and urgency.

I designed the set as a dynamic landscape of hundreds of cardboard boxes, which the performers continually reconfigured throughout the performance. This ever-shifting architecture became both prop and metaphor, conveying the instability in the characters' emotional lives, the clutter of unresolved trauma, and the desperate attempt to create order amidst the threat of collapse.

Performed in the round, and driven by a rhythm of phone calls, bird calls, lawn bowls and dance, Birdcage Thursdays asked powerful questions about trauma, attachment, negotiation, and consent—while the set itself transformed in real time, echoing the volatility of the world on stage.