Dementia Narrative and Performance Staging Reality Reimagining Identities 1St Edition Janet Gibson Full Chapter
Dementia Narrative and Performance Staging Reality Reimagining Identities 1St Edition Janet Gibson Full Chapter
Dementia Narrative and Performance Staging Reality Reimagining Identities 1St Edition Janet Gibson Full Chapter
Janet Gibson
Dementia, Narrative and Performance
Janet Gibson
Dementia, Narrative
and Performance
Staging Reality, Reimagining Identities
Janet Gibson
UTS Insearch
University of Technology
Sydney, NSW, Australia
Cover illustration: FAIRY FLOSS. Photo of Phillip Mills and Katia Molino from Theatre
Kantanka’s production of Missing the Bus to David Jones. Photo by Heidrun Löhr. Used
with permission of Carlos Gomes.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To Julia, Mary-Jane, and Sandy, with love
Acknowledgements
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
thinking. From first reading her article “God is a Talking Horse” to shar-
ing ideas over breakfast in Milwaukee, Anne continues to both impress
and surprise me with the depth of her intellect and her unwavering com-
mitment to creativity.
Carlos Gomes, the artistic director of Theatre Kantanka, was the soul of
generosity, answering questions and sending me DVDs and other material
which helped me dig deeper into Missing the Bus to David Jones. This the-
atre piece deserves an unquestionable place in the canon of great (demen-
tia) theatre. Thank you, Kate Denborough, for filling me in so promptly
on certain details to do with Sundowner.
Thanks, Vicki Sanchez, for all the information about The Bucket List.
Vicki is one of those very important dementia care workers who love what
they do and do it so well, despite the appalling pay. I hope this situation
changes for all aged care workers in the not too distant future. My grati-
tude also extends to all the people I worked with in TimeSlips sessions at
Uniting Locke Haven : your creativity and imagination refreshed and
inspired me when I was developing many of the ideas which form the
backbone of this book.
The delightful Maureen Matthews and I have been emailing each other
for quite a few years now. I was very lucky to see a performance of her
community readers’ theatre for people living in the early stages of a
dementia diagnosis—To Whom I May Concern®—when I was in New York
in June 2018, an experience which deepened my enthusiasm for this
modality. Thanks also to performers Therese, Julie, and David for wel-
coming me so warmly to the rehearsal before the performance.
My deliberations on To Whom I May Concern® were recently published
in RiDE, adapted for the special issue ‘On Access’. I would like to thank
the anonymous reviewers for input to that article which also helped me in
fashioning the corresponding book chapter. Collette Conroy, RiDE’s edi-
tor, has been very helpful and encouraging about my work since I first met
her at the Performance and Disability working group at the IFTR/FIRT
Stockholm conference 2016. A lot of other people in that group have
heard out my ideas at various stages and I thank you all but in particular
Yvonne Schmidt and Arseli Dokumaci. Arseli—thanks for your input on
some of the chapters, your willingness to do so, and your extremely per-
ceptive feedback. I am indebted to you for the comment in Chap. 8 on the
proliferation of diseases in this day and age in which there are not many
disease-free bodies left to discipline, in Foucault’s dispensation. Likewise,
thanks to Kate Maguire-Rosier and Catherine Maitland, my ad hoc
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix
3 Narrative Regimes 59
xi
xii Contents
Index 279
Abbreviations
xiii
xiv Abbreviations
Fig. 5.1 ‘Fairy Floss’. Katia Molino and Phillip Mills. Missing the Bus to
David Jones. Theatre Kantanka. Photo by Heidrun Löhr. Used
with permission of Carlos Gomes. (The photo shows a man in
a blue, grey and red cardigan wearing a green party hat and a
woman dressed in a black and white houndstooth jacket and
white hat. They are up very close to each other’s faces and are
eating and feeding each other white fairy floss 143
Fig. 5.2 ‘The Bus Stop’. Katia Molino waiting for the bus. Missing the
Bus to David Jones. Theatre Kantanka. Photo by Joanne Saad.
Used with permission of Carlos Gomes. (The photo shows a
woman dressed in a black and white houndstooth jacket, a white
hat, and white gloves, sitting on a seat clutching a black and
white handbag. She is looking off into the distance as if
expecting a bus to arrive any moment. A Filipino nurse or
care attendant wearing black pants and a white t-shirt is
approaching her) 151
Fig. 6.1 Marcia Bannister, Bucket List Sales Manager, and Jessie
Anderson, Bucket List Assistant Sales Manager. Video still from
Finding the Why. Enabling Active Participation in Life in Aged
Care (Fire Films). Still used with permission of Corrine
Maunder. (The photo shows two old women with short hair
sitting on an orange, red, and yellow striped couch with a very
high back. Marcia is on the left. She is taller than Jessie and has
short white hair. She is wearing a blouse with red, yellow, pink,
and green leaf patterns on it. Jessie is on the right with short
brown hair. She is wearing a white top with white beads. They
both have white mugs in their hands) 199
xv
xvi List of Figures
first heard it, is not the whole story either. In sum, I found myself part of
a story for which no template could be found, at that time, in the existing
repertoire.
Narrative sociologist Arthur Frank (2010) contends that, although
people tell their own stories about their lives, they do not make these sto-
ries up by themselves. There is a limited repertoire of stories to be told
from which we then tell ‘our’ stories, as is very evident in the case of
dementia. I now label this restricted arsenal of narratives the ‘right kind’
of dementia story, in Lyotard’s terms (1984), a ‘grand narrative’\, circu-
lating accounts of loss, despair, failure, and tragedy. This story does not
tell of the extant or emergent abilities of people affected by dementia,
particularly those sixty-five years and older. Instead, it focuses on their
pasts or on futures made grim for us all by the probability of a ‘silver tsu-
nami’ coming to destroy lives and push societies towards catastrophe. It
may also tell of long-suffering carers coping with the demands of aggres-
sive, forgetful, dependent, loved ones who are draining personal or famil-
ial emotional, physical, and financial resources. These dependent humans
are framed as ‘burdens’ to the economy, to society, to us all.
In the twenty-first century, in most Western cultures, these types of
stories fit into an overarching performance ‘framework’, which perfor-
mance scholar Jon McKenzie has labelled a “mode of power” (2001, 25).
This mode determines the ways in which, and the contexts where, people
with dementia ‘perform’ their stories and selves, mainly due to the ascen-
dancy of neoliberal capitalism. Neoliberalism can be defined as:
certain ways for people with dementia and their care partners. I contend
that this mode currently predominates among others, regulating both the
manners in which, and the situations where, people with dementia ‘per-
form’ their stories and selves. In the domain of human care, performance
as a “mode of power” (ibid.) insists on task efficiency over quality time,
results over relationships, and measurement over magnanimity, especially
in care homes and in interpersonal relationships.
My encounter with dementia and the subsequent institutionalisation of
my mother in a care home opened new insights into both performance as
a “mode of power” (ibid.) and the relationship between stories and ethics.
Constantly revolving in my mind at the time of my mother’s diagnosis and
beyond were the words of virtue ethicist Alasdair MacIntyre: “I can only
answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question
‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?” (2011, 250)—words
which deepened and complicated the research I was undertaking at the
time into verbatim theatre and ethics. I began to wonder if theatre pieces
that worked verbatim—using the words and stories of people with demen-
tia—existed, and if so, what ethical provocations they would offer.
Verbatim theatre normally relies on the life stories of ‘reliable’ narrators
and, in oral history projects anyway, the assumption of the cognitive
“competency” of the primary teller (Pollock 2005, 3). But people with
dementia are often ‘unreliable narrators’4 who frequently struggle to
remember their life stories or segments of them and who regularly resort
to fabrication in the telling. In part because of this, and because of the
(often gradual) decline in many of their cognitive and physical capabilities,
they are repeatedly stereotyped as the “living dead” (Behuniak 2011) and
not seen as ‘real’ people.5
Over the last twenty years or so, and across the globe, there has been an
‘explosion’ of people’s stories and words deployed in theatre productions
across the above-mentioned performance genres. Performed narratives
have included tales of trauma, victimhood, and crisis giving voice to the
socially, economically, or culturally marginalised. These narratives usually
aim to facilitate sociopolitical change for the participants, and/or the spec-
tators, as well as change at a broader social level. Some of these produc-
tions feature the people themselves; in others, actors perform. The
performances may take place in theatres, community centres, or similar
venues. They raise numerous issues and challenges for the theatre makers
creating them, and to their viewing audiences, which theatre and perfor-
mance studies scholars have been keen to interrogate.6
Apart from the emergence of a growing number of professional and
semi-professional art theatre productions dealing with dementia across
Western stages, “theatre of the real” (Martin 2013) productions about
dementia have also started to surface. Certain productions have been cre-
ated using the textual input of people with dementia (and their families, in
some instances). So, what are the challenges to theatre makers working
with these practices when people can no longer say who they are or tell
8 J. GIBSON
dementia and the people who live with it? In the other chapters, in some
to a greater extent than others, I reverse this question to ask: How might
dementia shift or add to questions, debates, and issues in theatre and per-
formance studies? The case studies analysed relate to ideas drawn from all
the above-mentioned literatures, where pertinent, including reminiscence
and the care home. I will now briefly introduce each of these literatures
and their key theorists.
Dementia studies can be delineated into five main, somewhat diverse
approaches: medical and biomedical, personhood, embodiment, relational
care, and social citizenship. Firstly, medical and biomedical approaches
dominate the existing research into, and treatment of, Alzheimer’s disease
and other dementias.9 They are “situated within a discourse of loss” (Beard
2004, 417) and typically prioritise drug treatments or molecular testing
over attention to the social and ethical complexities that dementia also
entails. They advance the separation of the physical, mental, and cultural
dimensions of illness and ageing, reducing the ageing body (and many
others) to a potential diagnosis, while the sociocultural, emotional, and
phenomenological aspects of illness and ageing for individuals and their
families are quite often ignored (ibid., 416).10 Factors like race, class, gen-
der, religion, sexual orientation, disability, family of origin, and cohort
effects will all contribute to differences in the experiences of both ageing
and dementia, but these factors are beyond what medicine and biomedi-
cine generally offer patients.
Secondly, the ‘personhood’ approach, a challenge to the biomedical
episteme, emanated as a reaction to the single-minded focus on cognition
and neurological changes in the brain that had dominated the dementia
industry until the 1980s (Gilleard 2000). This approach opposes the
mainly negative ideas about the person diagnosed with dementia that
arguably dominate studies in biomedicine (Leibing 2006, 254), recognis-
ing the person, not just the disease. It continues to gather numerous new
practices under its mantle. A person-centred focus in dementia care was
initiated principally through the work of social psychologist Tom Kitwood,
largely through the influence of his groundbreaking text Dementia recon-
sidered: The person comes first (1997), and is steadily becoming a seminal
paradigm. Personhood is conceptualised from the standpoint of interac-
tionist social theory, the belief that selfhood is socially acquired and sus-
tained (Kontos 2012, 330).
1 MY MOTHER’S STORY, MY STORY 11
studies scholars (see Davis 1995, 2002, 2013; McRuer 2006; Siebers
2006, 2008) recognise the category of disability to be intensely problem-
atic and unstable. This is for many reasons, including that it swells and
contracts to encompass so-called normal people as well (Davis 1995, xv);
that is, all people chance stepping on and off the disability continuum,
especially as they get sick, age, or are diagnosed with diseases like demen-
tia. Mike Oliver and Len Barton are exceptions here, arguing that the
current interests pursued by many contemporary disability studies scholars
(postmodernism, representation, and embodiment) are hard to justify in
terms of their “immediate relevance to the struggles of disabled people to
lead a decent life” (2002, 8). Basically, disability studies is useful to the
pursuit of my arguments as it helps to clarify how the notion of ‘normalcy’
has been constructed and its intrinsic relationship to what is commonly
regarded as not ‘normal’, across many cultures, that is, to disability. In this
endeavour, I am principally aided by the work of Lennard Davis (1995)
and Tobin Siebers (2006, 2008, 2010). I also work with research in per-
formance and disability studies.14
As with age studies scholars, some post-structuralist disability scholars
have also drawn on Judith Butler’s theories of performativity to theorise
the discursive construction of disability identity. Both Petra Kuppers
(2003, 2011) and Robert McRuer (2006) argue, following Butler, that as
with gender, cultural scripts about disability can and should be resisted
and disrupted along with the discursive practices that produce both the
disabled and the able body. As old age may be experienced as disabling by
some, and as dementia is ordinarily seen as both a cognitive impairment
and a cognitive disability, representations of (old) people with dementia
must be theorised on a spectrum stretching between the disciplinary loca-
tions of age and those of disability studies.
However, the relationship between age studies and disability studies
holds many tensions. Age studies scholarship tends to undermine assump-
tions that ageing disables; it challenges commonly held generalisations
that all old people are “warm but incompetent” (Basting 2009, 26).15
Margaret Morganroth Gullette (2004, 13) proposes that the “[d]ecline
narrative” runs popular discourses on ageing. On the other hand, some
disability scholarship critiques assumptions that the able, fit, and ‘normal’
body is always free from disability, using old age as the point towards
which all able bodies are heading, a kind of ‘disabling normalcy’. Feminist
disability scholar Susan Wendell maintains that unless we die early “we are
all disabled eventually” (1996, 18).
14 J. GIBSON
In this book, I engage disability studies with age studies to show how
the abilities of people living with age-related dementia are greater than
imagined, while at the same time acknowledging the actuality of their
limits. To further complicate matters, the relationship between dementia
and disability resembles “planets spinning on different axes” (Shakespeare
et al. 2017, 1). In disability sectors, dementia is typically perceived as a
health issue; in dementia sectors, people with dementia do not usually
think of themselves as disabled (ibid.). In this book, I mine both dementia
and disability studies where necessary to support my arguments.
I also take some direction from particular theatre and performance
studies scholars working on refugee theatre, primarily Alison Jeffers (2006,
2008, 2009, 2012) and Caroline Wake (2010a, 2010b, 2011, 2013,
2018). I do this because refugee theatre productions across the globe have
tended to rely on the verbatim genre or other “theatre of the real” (Martin
2013) techniques. Given that there is very little work in theatre and per-
formance studies on “theatre of the real” (ibid.) and dementia, the aca-
demic work that has emanated from scholars working on refugee theatre
provides a useful parallel to concerns that match mine—a point I consis-
tently make in Chap. 2, where I attempt to forge this parallel in more
detail concerning the links between the crisis of dementia and the crisis of
asylum. Consequently, in Chap. 2, I also cite the occasional refugee stud-
ies scholar (e.g. Peter Nyers 2006).
But the primary disciplinary location of this book is in theatre and per-
formance studies. I conflate the two disciplines, as they are “merging and
intermingling in various ways” (Balme 2008, 12), which makes it increas-
ingly difficult to separate theorists into camps. However, disciplinary dif-
ferentiations, which can be tracked historically, do still exist (see Balme
2008.). Today, theatre studies has many fields, with a strong focus on live
art performances, and the study of texts (ibid., 11). Work within perfor-
mance studies has inclined towards Richard Schechner’s “is” or “as” of
performance (2013, 38). The former centres on that which is historically,
socially, culturally, and traditionally accepted to be performance; the latter
refers to the way in which events or practices can be seen to be perfor-
mances, including gender, sexuality, and ethnicity, among many other cat-
egories. In this way, “performance studies grants itself a wider range of
‘objects’ or case studies than theatre studies might” (Wake 2010a, 26).16
In essence, my examination of both “theatre of the real” (Martin 2013)
and applied theatre and performance falls under the broad moniker of
1 MY MOTHER’S STORY, MY STORY 15
theatre and performance. The works discussed in this book dialogue with
the notion that we perform ourselves on a continuum that ranges from
daily acts of the self to systemised stage performances and rituals both
sacred and secular (ibid.).
This book also references theories of narrativity, including the work of
Arthur Frank (2010) and Paul John Eakin (1999, 2001, 2006, 2008), as
well as that of narrative philosopher Galen Strawson (2004). Additionally,
input comes from medical anthropology (Leibing and Cohen 2006; Lock
2013) and medical history (Ballenger 2006; Beach 1987; Whitehouse and
George 2008). Other material is drawn on at various stages: for example,
the work of philosophers Jacques Rancière (2004, 2007) and Ian Hacking
(1995, 1999).
My methodological approach is varied. Adopting “performance analy-
sis” (Pavis 2003) for my examination of both art theatre and applied the-
atre productions, I draw on notes taken visiting live performances,
watching videos of the performances (Balme 2008, 136), and referencing
“supplementary documents” (Pavis 2003, 40), including theatre reviews,
photographs, programmes, and other outreach materials like education
packs and websites. As well, I opt for (post-structuralist) discourse analysis
due to my sustained interest in how discourses shape reality and power-
fully influence what gets ‘storied’. ‘Discourse’ is used here in the
Foucauldian sense, to do with how knowledge is composed alongside the
social practices, subjectivities, and power relations built into such knowl-
edges, as well as into the relations between them. More than just ways of
thinking and producing meaning, discourses constitute the body, mind,
and emotional lives of the subjects they seek to govern (Weedon 1987,
108). I temper my acknowledgement of the power of discourses to consti-
tute bodies and minds by recognising that biological, material, and
embodied elements also play a role in the construction of dementia sub-
jectivities. Both post-structuralist and phenomenological insights are use-
ful for theorising dementia personhood. For people diagnosed with
dementia, the body speaks, conveying meaning, even if the world in which
they live is created, in large part, linguistically (Vasterling 2003, 212).
Given the material force of discourses in forming and reforming the
normal, the natural, and the true, I am primarily concerned with excavat-
ing the values and politics underlying these discourses in twenty-first-
century Western cultures, both to make them visible and to disturb their
facile endorsement. In view of my interest in the discourses circulating
about age-related dementia in the mass media and on the internet, I
16 J. GIBSON
practices do have specific charters, along with separate literatures and his-
tories that map them, I incorporate both of these in this section under the
moniker of ‘performance’. I do this because, when the seemingly incon-
gruent practices and products of select applied theatre interventions (often
shown to known audiences with a focus on health, well-being, and process
over product) are situated side by side with professionally devised ‘art’
theatre products for public stages, what emerges is their commonalities
and the way they ‘speak’ to each other. For example, although innovation
and experimentation may be more to the fore with art pieces, and drama-
turgical, aesthetic, and reception issues likely to surface, “theatre of the
real” (ibid.) productions may also intend to educate, inform, and change
political and ethical landscapes as well as the views of its spectators; these
productions may also deploy a stripped back aesthetic consonant with
some theatres of social change (applied theatre). Playwright Robin Soans
contends that “the quintessence of verbatim theatre is a group of actors
sitting on chairs, or cardboard boxes or a sofa, talking to the audience,
simply telling stories” (2008, 21).
Furthermore, the concerns of many “theatre of the real” (Martin 2013)
and applied theatre practices are not always discrete. For example, an
applied theatre intervention may also use “theatre of the real” (ibid.) tech-
niques, like verbatim or documentary materials, be devised in a commu-
nity setting, and principally be constructed from the autobiographical
stories of its participants, as is To Whom I May Concern® (TWIMC), my
autobiographical case study. In fact, certain applied theatre products may
be framed as art pieces with a strong aesthetic focus, even if applied theatre
has conventionally focused on social efficacy over aesthetics (Prentki 1998;
Thompson 2009).
In Chap. 4, I navigate the complex terrain of ‘the real’ and ‘reality’. I
argue that any reality being framed on stage will inevitably cite the frames
of reference underpinning and bolstering this reality, which is a reality
always already mediated, making it almost impossible to avoid replaying
the ‘right kind’ of dementia story. These stories include discourses and
cultural narratives about ageing and specifically about old people living
with dementia, which summon what I call ‘normative age-and-dementia-
effects’ (following Moore 2014), that is, the naturalised effects of discur-
sive representations of ‘old’ people living with dementia and the biases and
assumptions underpinning and sustaining these representations.
Chapter 4 also provides extended definitions of the similarities and dif-
ferences between the terms “theatre of the real” (Martin 2013), “Theatre
18 J. GIBSON
of Real People” (Garde and Mumford 2016), and “reality theatre” (Wake
2010b, 6–8). Additionally, it begins an examination into the connection
between words, stories, identity, and the materialisation of reality in “the-
atre of the real” (Martin 2013), taking a particular interest in verbatim
theatre and its history, as well as considering what provocations dementia
offers verbatim theatre and its scholarship, as dementia draws attention to
the nature of the ‘truth’ of any story. Building on these underpinnings,
Chap. 5 examines two very different Australian experimental art theatre
productions with postdramatic leanings as optics through which ethical,
political, and aesthetic problems to do with dementia and age representa-
tion are exposed. The extent to which they tell the ‘right kind’ of demen-
tia story is also assessed.
In Chap. 6, the focus shifts to applied theatre practices, as well as para-
theatrical modes. This chapter critiques chronological life story narrative
when conceived as a universal ethical and political act of healing for people
with dementia, or as an unfailing practice of late life therapy, by extending
James Thompson’s (2009) challenges to narrative hegemony in applied
theatre contexts. This allows entry to the claim that the pressure to pro-
duce a life story, in the context of dementia, might in fact be oppressive
rather than therapeutic. I then analyse TimeSlips, a storytelling interven-
tion increasingly being used in aged care facilities around the world, com-
paring it with the popular Reminiscence Therapy covered in Chap. 3. I
also explore what I term ‘narra[tive]-theatrical spaces’: alternative ways of
reconfiguring performance in care homes which take seriously the oppor-
tunities offered by the location itself in transforming the lives of people
living in care homes.
Chapter 7 moves on to public autobiographical performances by peo-
ple living with dementia and probes one specific performance modality To
Whom I May Concern® (TWIMC), both a play and a therapy, operating
virtually and as live theatre. TWIMC reframes well-worn issues in the
autobiographical literature as complex and fresh, especially the construc-
tion of the self and its relationship to narrative, identity, and representa-
tion. Not widely taken up by people living with dementia, the shortage of
public autobiographical performance is undoubtedly connected to, and
limited by, taken-for-granted understandings of dementia and by dis-
courses about the capabilities of (old) people living with dementia, which
both create and control the situations, perceptions, and worlds in which
these people can perform their narratives and audiences can listen to them.
1 MY MOTHER’S STORY, MY STORY 19
Notes
1. I prefer the term ‘care partner’ to ‘caregiver’ because I wish to challenge
the notion implicit in the tag ‘giver’ that people living with dementia are
‘takers’. The relational dynamics between the two parties are far more
complex than that. In fact, (old) people living with dementia may often
give a lot to those caring for them, if the latter can learn to open up to the
possibilities of the relationship.
2. Using ‘our’ highlights that all ‘personal’ stories are born out of interrela-
tionship, co-created with and through the stories of significant others in
our lives. However, in claiming that this story is ‘ours’, I am ‘speaking for’
my mother, given the non-normative features of our communication.
Although ‘my’ story is inextricably bound up with my mother’s, I am not
her. I cannot know what it is like to live with AD, as I have not (yet) expe-
rienced it.
3. Regarding terminology: throughout the book, I generally use the terms
‘people with dementia’ or ‘people living with dementia’ not to suggest that
all people with dementia form a homogeneous group or that dementia is a
1 MY MOTHER’S STORY, MY STORY 21
stable disease category; rather, these terms are preferred over the more
reductive ‘victim’, ‘sufferer’, or biomedically oriented ‘patient’.
4. The term ‘unreliable narrator’ was first coined in 1961 by Wayne Booth in
The Rhetoric of Fiction (158–159). It refers to a narrator, most often in
literature, but sometimes in film or theatre, whose credibility has been seri-
ously compromised.
5. I have placed the word ‘real’ in inverted commas to highlight the many
debates between certain philosophers and disability studies scholars over
the personhood of the cognitively disabled and who counts or not as a
bona fide person (Kittay 2009; Kittay and Carlson 2010). However, the
real is not only a philosophically contentious idea but, especially within
theatre and performance studies, a more problematic and ambiguous term
than the mere application of inverted commas could underscore. These
ideas are taken up in Chap. 4.
6. Widely discussed to date have been, among other issues, its “paradoxical
pairings” (Wake 2011, 1) including, for example, the personal and the
political (Heddon 2008); replication (reiteration and re-enactment) and
addition (formerly excluded stories) (Wake 2010a); the archive and the
repertoire (Wake 2011); and reality and representation (Tigner 2002;
Reinelt 2006, 2009; Bottoms 2006; Heddon 2008; Martin 2006, 2010,
2013). Interest has also been shown in trauma, telling, and witnessing
(Salverson 1996, 1997, 1999, 2001; Stuart Fisher 2011; Jeffers 2006,
2008, 2009, 2012; Wake 2010a; Thompson 2004, 2005, 2009); the
appropriation of life stories by theatre makers (Couser 2004; Dolan 2005;
Baglia and Foster 2005; Heddon 2008; Casey 2009; Jeffers 2012); and the
ethical and political challenges of dealing with people’s stories and the aes-
thetic challenges of creating interesting theatre from them (Patraka 1996;
Peterson 1997; Salverson 1994, 1996, 1997, 1999; Lathem 2005; Jeffers
2006, 2008, 2009, 2012; Stuart Fisher 2011).
7. Publications on drama therapy interventions with old people living with
dementia are available, but they do not specifically look at the nexus
between narrative and identity (Jaaniste 2011; Reinstein 2004). Innovative
work is emerging in the applied theatre literature on care homes (Nicholson
2011; Hatton 2014) but not in regard to performed narratives in particular.
8. In The presentation of the self in everyday life, Erving Goffman posits that
the “self itself does not derive from its possessor, but from the whole scene
of his [sic] action” (1959, 252). Using these ideas as a basis, Anne Basting
argues that selves with dementia are more dependent on others than some
other selves may be, but that this is not necessarily a problem if we picture
selfhood to be on a continuum from a state of mythical independence to
that of extreme dependence (2001, 79). Basting further argues that people
22 J. GIBSON
with dementia will usually rely heavily on others for their sense of selfhood
but that, to some extent, we all do.
9. These terms are often used interchangeably to refer to conventional medi-
cine. Biomedicine is the application of the principles of the natural sci-
ences, especially biology, physiology, and biochemistry, to clinical medicine
or research (MacIntosh 1999; OED Online 2014/2015). Medicine is “the
science or practice of the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease”
(OED Online 2014/2015).
10. The word ‘illness’ refers here to an individual’s experience of ‘disease’
(pathology), or of poor health, although ‘disease’ and ‘illness’ are com-
monly used interchangeably (Dokumaci 2013, 107).
11. Care ethics is most often defined as a practice or virtue rather than a theory
as such. It is based on the idea of the importance of caring for the depen-
dent and vulnerable in society and is inspired by the mother–child relation-
ship. Rooted in the sentimentalist tradition of moral theory, care ethics
upholds the importance of care as an incentive in ethical thought, along
with recognising the significance of emotion, the body, and reasoning from
particulars over abstract ideas such as justice and agency which are
enshrined in liberal human rights theory. It emerged in the mid-1980s
from work done by psychologist Carol Gilligan and philosopher Nel
Noddings who critiqued traditional moral approaches accusing them of
male bias. Most care theorists argue that care involves maintaining rela-
tionships by focusing on the well-being of care-givers and care-receivers in
a network of social relations (https://www.iep.utm.edu/care-eth/).
12. Age studies is interdisciplinary and collaborative, drawing on research
efforts from both the humanities and the social sciences, despite their very
different research approaches. This is to be expected, given that age is a
phenomenon that affects so many areas of life. However, some scholars are
surprised at how long it has taken for interest in this field to burgeon, as it
is a relatively new area of inquiry. These same academics have been arguing
about the importance of its presence in the academy for decades where it
should take “its rightful place with other intersectional classifications, such
as gender, race, class, and ability” (Lipscomb and Marshall 2010, 4).
13. ‘The term “normative age-effects” is used by Bridie Moore (2014, 2), fol-
lowing Judith Butler, to underscore that age is produced as an effect gener-
ated by “cultural apparatus” (Butler 1990, 199) through media images,
performances on stage, and so forth. “Temporal depth” is a model of age-
ing that embraces change across the life span (Basting 1998, 22). For
Basting, the ageing body on stage is valuable exactly because it can repre-
sent the spread of difference and variety of age across time (1998, 141).
Cristofici’s (1999) “significant form” is a term moved over from Cristofici’s
analysis of Jeff Wall’s photography to performance by Bridie Moore
1 MY MOTHER’S STORY, MY STORY 23
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The Hartford Convention.
The second session of the 17th Congress opened on the 4th day of
March, 1820, with James Monroe at the head of the Executive
Department of the Government, and the Democratic party in the
majority in both branches of the Federal Legislature. The Cabinet at
that time was composed of the most brilliant minds of the country,
indeed as most justly remarked by Senator Thomas H. Benton in his
published review of the events of that period, it would be difficult to
find in any government, in any country, at any time, more talent and
experience, more dignity and decorum, more purity of private life, a
larger mass of information, and more addiction to business, than was
comprised in the list of celebrated names then constituting the
executive department of the government. The legislative department
was equally impressive. The exciting and agitating question then
pending before Congress was on the admission of the State of
Missouri into the Federal Union, the subject of the issue being the
attempted tacking on of conditions restricting slavery within her
limits. She was admitted without conditions under the so-called
compromise, which abolished it in certain portions of the then
province of Louisiana. In this controversy, the compromise was
sustained and carried entirely by the Democratic Senators and
members from the Southern and slaveholding States aided and
sanctioned by the Executive, and it was opposed by fifteen Senators
from non-slaveholding States, who represented the opposite side on
the political questions of the day. It passed the House by a close vote
of 86 to 82. It has been seriously questioned since whether this act
was constitutional. The real struggle was political, and for the
balance of power. For a while it threatened the total overthrow of all
political parties upon principle, and the substitution of geographical
parties discriminated by the slave line, and thus destroying the
proper action of the Federal government, and leading to a separation
of the States. It was a federal movement, accruing to the benefit of
that party, and at first carried all the Northern democracy in its
current, giving the supremacy to their adversaries. When this effect
was perceived, democrats from the northern non-slaveholding States
took early opportunity to prevent their own overthrow, by voting for
the admission of the States on any terms, and thus prevent the
eventual separation of the States in the establishment of
geographical parties divided by a slavery and anti-slavery line.
The year 1820 marked a period of financial distress in the country,
which soon became that of the government. The army was reduced,
and the general expenses of the departments cut down, despite
which measures of economy the Congress deemed it necessary to
authorize the President to contract for a loan of five million dollars.
Distress was the cry of the day; relief the general demand, the chief
demand coming from debtors to the Government for public lands
purchased under the then credit system, this debt at that time
aggregating twenty-three millions of dollars. The banks failed,
money vanished, instalments were coming due which could not be
met; and the opening of Congress in November, 1820, was saluted by
the arrival of memorials from all the new States praying for the relief
to the purchaser of the public lands. The President referred to it in
his annual message of that year, and Congress passed a measure of
relief by changing the system to cash sales instead of credit, reducing
the price of the lands, and allowing present debtors to apply
payments already made to portions of the land purchased,
relinquishing the remainder. Applications were made at that time for
the establishment of the preemptive system, but without effect; the
new States continued to press the question and finally prevailed, so
that now the preemptive principle has become a fixed part of our
land system, permanently incorporated with it, and to the equal
advantage of the settler and the government.
The session of 1820–21, is remarkable as being the first at which
any proposition was made in Congress for the occupation and
settlement of our territory on the Columbia river—the only part then
owned by the United States on the Pacific coast. It was made by Dr.
Floyd, a representative from Virginia, who argued that the
establishment of a civilized power on the American coast of the
Pacific could not fail to produce great and wonderful benefits not
only to our own country, but to the people of Eastern Asia, China and
Japan on the opposite side of the Pacific Ocean, and that the valley of
the Columbia might become the granary of China and Japan. This
movement suggested to Senator Benton, to move, for the first time
publicly in the United States, a resolution to send ministers to the
Oriental States.
At this time treaties with Mexico and Spain were ratified, by which
the United States acquired Florida and ceded Texas; these treaties,
together with the Missouri compromise—a measure
contemporaneous with them—extinguished slave soil in all the
United States territory west of the Mississippi, except in that portion
which was to constitute the State of Arkansas; and, including the
extinction in Texas consequent upon its cession to a non-
slaveholding power, constituted the largest territorial abolition of
slavery that was ever up to that period effected by any political power
of any nation.
The outside view of the slave question in the United States, at this
time, is that the extension of slavery was then arrested,
circumscribed, and confined within narrow territorial limits, while
free States were permitted an almost unlimited expansion.
In 1822 a law passed Congress abolishing the Indian factory
system, which had been established during Washington’s
administration, in 1796, under which the Government acted as a
factor or agent for the sale of supplies to the Indians and the
purchase of furs from them; this branch of the service then belonged
to the department of the Secretary of War. The abuses discovered in
it led to the discontinuance of that system.
The Presidential election of 1824 was approaching, the candidates
were in the field, their respective friends active and busy, and
popular topics for the canvass in earnest requisition. Congress was
full of projects for different objects of internal improvement, mainly
in roads and canals, and the friends of each candidate exerted
themselves in rivalry of each other, under the supposition that their
opinions would stand for those of their principals. An act for the
preservation of the Cumberland Road, which passed both houses of
Congress, met with a veto from President Monroe, accompanied by a
state paper in exposition of his opinions upon the whole subject of
Federal interference in matters of inter state commerce and roads
and canals. He discussed the measure in all its bearings, and plainly
showed it to be unconstitutional. After stating the question, he
examined it under every head of constitutional derivation under
which its advocates claimed the power, and found it to be granted by
no one of them and virtually prohibited by some of them. This was
then and has since been considered to be the most elaborate and
thoroughly considered opinion upon the general question which has
ever been delivered by any American statesman. This great state
paper, delivered at a time when internal improvement by the federal
government had become an issue in the canvass for the Presidency
and was ardently advocated by three of the candidates and qualified
by two others, had an immense current in its power, carrying with it
many of the old strict constructionists.
The revision of the tariff, with a view to the protection of home
industry, and to the establishment of what was then called “The
American System,” was one of the large subjects before Congress at
the session of 1823–24, and was the regular commencement of the
heated debates on that question which afterwards ripened into a
serious difficulty between the federal government and some of the
Southern States. The presidential election being then depending, the
subject became tinctured with party politics, in which so far as that
ingredient was concerned, and was not controlled by other
considerations, members divided pretty much on the line which
always divided them on a question of constructive powers. The
protection of domestic industry not being among the powers granted,
was looked for in the incidental; and denied by the strict
constructionists to be a substantive term, to be exercised for the
direct purpose of protection; but admitted by all at that time and
ever since the first tariff act of 1789, to be an incident to the revenue
raising power, and an incident to be regarded in the exercise of that
power. Revenue the object, protection the incident, had been the rule
in the earlier tariffs; now that rule was sought to be reversed, and to
make protection the object of the law, and revenue the incident. Mr.
Henry Clay was the leader in the proposed revision and the
champion of the American system; he was ably supported in the
House by many able and effective speakers; who based their
argument on the general distress then alleged to be prevalent in the
country. Mr. Daniel Webster was the leading speaker on the other
side, and disputed the universality of the distress which had been
described; and contested the propriety of high or prohibitory duties,
in the present active and intelligent state of the world, to stimulate
industry and manufacturing enterprise.
The bill was carried by a close vote in both Houses. Though
brought forward avowedly for the protection of domestic
manufactures, it was not entirely supported on that ground; an
increase of revenue being the motive with some, the public debt then
being nearly ninety millions. An increased protection to the products
of several States, as lead in Missouri and Illinois, hemp in Kentucky,
iron in Pennsylvania, wool in Ohio and New York, commanded many
votes for the bill; and the impending presidential election had its
influence in its favor.
Two of the candidates, Messrs. Adams and Clay, voted for and
avowedly supported General Jackson, who voted for the bill, was for
it, as tending to give a home supply of the articles necessary in time
of war, and as raising revenue to pay the public debt; Mr. Crawford
was opposed to it, and Mr. Calhoun had withdrawn as a Presidential
candidate. The Southern planting States were dissatisfied, believing
that the new burdens upon imports which it imposed, fell upon the
producers of the exports, and tended to enrich one section of the
Union at the expense of another. The attack and support of the bill
took much of a sectional aspect; Virginia, the two Carolinas, Georgia,
and some others, being unanimous against it. Pennsylvania, New
York, Ohio, and Kentucky being unanimous for it. Massachusetts,
which up to this time had no small influence in commerce, voted,
with all, except one member, against it. With this sectional aspect, a
tariff for protection, also began to assume a political aspect, being
taken under the care of the party, afterwards denominated as Whig.
The bill was approved by President Monroe; a proof that that careful
and strict constructionist of the constitution did not consider it as
deprived of its revenue character by the degree of protection which it
extended.
A subject which at the present time is exciting much criticism, viz:
proposed amendments to the constitution relative to the election of
President and Vice-President, had its origin in movements in that
direction taken by leading Democrats during the campaign of 1824.
The electoral college has never been since the early elections, an
independent body free to select a President and Vice-President;
though in theory they have been vested with such powers, in practice
they have no such practical power over the elections, and have had
none since their institution. In every case the elector has been an
instrument, bound to obey a particular impulsion, and disobedience
to which would be attended with infamy, and with every penalty
which public indignation could inflict. From the beginning they have
stood pledged to vote for the candidate indicated by the public will;
and have proved not only to be useless, but an inconvenient
intervention between the people and the object of their choice. Mr.
McDuffie in the House of Representatives and Mr. Benton in the
Senate, proposed amendments; the mode of taking the direct vote to
be in districts, and the persons receiving the greatest number of
votes for President or Vice-President in any district, to count one
vote for such office respectively which is nothing but substituting the
candidates themselves for their electoral representatives.
In the election of 1824 four candidates were before the people for
the office of President, General Jackson, John Quincy Adams,
William H. Crawford and Henry Clay. None of them received a
majority of the 261 electoral votes, and the election devolved upon
the House of Representatives. John C. Calhoun had a majority of the
electoral votes for the office of Vice-President, and was elected. Mr.
Adams was elected President by the House of Representatives,
although General Jackson was the choice of the people, having
received the greatest number of votes at the general election. The
election of Mr. Adams was perfectly constitutional, and as such fully
submitted to by the people; but it was a violation of the demos krateo
principle; and that violation was equally rebuked. All the
representatives who voted against the will of their constituents, lost
their favor, and disappeared from public life. The representation in
the House of Representatives was largely changed at the first general
election, and presented a full opposition to the new President. Mr.
Adams himself was injured by it, and at the ensuing presidential
election was beaten by General Jackson more than two to one.
Mr. Clay, who took the lead in the House for Mr. Adams, and
afterwards took upon himself the mission of reconciling the people to
his election in a series of public speeches, was himself crippled in the
effort, lost his place in the democratic party, and joined the Whigs
(then called the national republicans). The democratic principle was
victor over the theory of the Constitution, and beneficial results
ensued. It vindicated the people in their right and their power. It re-
established parties upon the basis of principle, and drew anew party
lines, then almost obliterated under the fusion of parties during the
“era of good feeling,” and the efforts of leading men to make personal
parties for themselves. It showed the conservative power of our
government to lie in the people, more than in its constituted
authorities. It showed that they were capable of exercising the
function of self-government, and lastly, it assumed the supremacy of
the democracy for a long time, and until lost by causes to be referred
to hereafter. The Presidential election of 1824 is remarkable under
another aspect—its results cautioned all public men against future
attempts to govern presidential elections in the House of
Representatives; and it put an end to the practice of caucus
nominations for the Presidency by members of Congress. This mode
of concentrating public opinion began to be practiced as the eminent
men of the Revolution, to whom public opinion awarded a
preference, were passing away, and when new men, of more equal
pretensions, were coming upon the stage. It was tried several times
with success and general approbation, because public sentiment was
followed—not led—by the caucus. It was attempted in 1824 and
failed; all the opponents of Mr. Crawford, by their joint efforts,
succeeded, and justly in the fact though not in the motive, in
rendering these Congress caucus nominations odious to the people,
and broke them down. They were dropped, and a different mode
adopted—that of party nominations by conventions of delegates from
the States.
The administration of Mr. Adams commenced with his inaugural
address, in which the chief topic was that of internal national
improvement by the federal government. This declared policy of the
administration furnished a ground of opposition against Mr. Adams,
and went to the reconstruction of parties on the old line of strict, or
latitudinous, construction of the Constitution. It was clear from the
beginning that the new administration was to have a settled and
strong opposition, and that founded in principles of government—
the same principles, under different forms, which had discriminated
parties at the commencement of the federal government. Men of the
old school—survivors of the contest of the Adams and Jefferson
times, with some exceptions, divided accordingly—the federalists
going for Mr. Adams, the republicans against him, with the mass of
the younger generation. The Senate by a decided majority, and the
House by a strong minority, were opposed to the policy of the new
President.
In 1826 occurred the famous debates in the Senate and the House,
on the proposed Congress of American States, to contract alliances to
guard against and prevent the establishment of any future European
colony within its borders. The mission though sanctioned was never
acted upon or carried out. It was authorized by very nearly a party
vote, the democracy as a party being against it. The President, Mr.
Adams, stated the objects of the Congress to be as follows: “An
agreement between all the parties represented at the meeting, that
each will guard, by its own means, against the establishment of any
future European colony within its own borders, may be advisable.
This was, more than two years since, announced by my predecessor
to the world, as a principle resulting from the emancipation of both
the American continents. It may be so developed to the new southern
nations, that they may feel it as an essential appendage to their
independence.”
Mr. Adams had been a member of Mr. Monroe’s cabinet, filling the
department from which the doctrine would emanate. The
enunciation by him as above of this “Monroe Doctrine,” as it is
called, is very different from what it has of late been supposed to be,
as binding the United States to guard all the territory of the New
World from European colonization. The message above quoted was
written at a time when the doctrine as enunciated by the former
President through the then Secretary was fresh in the mind of the
latter, and when he himself in a communication to the American
Senate was laying it down for the adoption of all the American
nations in a general congress of their deputies. According to
President Adams, this “Monroe Doctrine” (according to which it has
been of late believed that the United States were to stand guard over
the two Americas, and repulse all intrusive colonists from their
shores), was entirely confined to our own borders; that it was only
proposed to get the other States of the New World to agree that, each
for itself, and by its own means, should guard its own territories;
and, consequently, that the United States, so far from extending
gratuitous protection to the territories of other States, would neither
give, nor receive, aid in any such enterprise, but that each should use