Lydia Davies

In this 25-minute live vocal performance, a boss becomes the bigger adult and inadvertently traps himself in the kitchen. Part fable, part vocal improvisation, this tragicomic cautionary tale navigates the mishandling of power, control, language, and a loaf of bread. As semantics get stripped to syllabics, a drumbeat rises, and lyrics fracture into half-plea, half-refrain.

‘By end of play’ touches on familial love co-opted as workplace rhetoric, bread’s symbolism, and the 20th-century carnival freak show. As care curdles with control, authority gets blown out of proportion and falls into farce.

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Lydia Davies is an artist and writer, working across performance, sound, moving image, painting and bookmaking. Lydia is preoccupied with interpersonal dynamics, bodily gestures, and the shifting registers of voice and narration. Her work draws attention to the ways in which selves are both sustained and undone through their relations.

She has recently shared live performances at Spike Island (Bristol), Fruitmarket (Edinburgh), and David Dale Gallery (Glasgow).
www.lydiadavies.co.uk
@lydiaacdavies