A C12 adventure writer, a C21 audience

In the first of ExploreTheArch’s works exploring author Marie de France’s medieval adventure writing, three unconventional protagonists pushed boundaries to honour their unconventional selves. A youth uninterested in love, a woman who says something she regrets and a steady partner who’s a closet werewolf three days a week took up residence in three nooks and crannies of the house.

The audience viewed them through window panes and doorways in the first show after covid lockdown. From these outdoor seating portals, viewers explored the narratives framed by the domestic entry points until the stories leapt out and swept viewers around to the next portal.

At the end of the evening the stories went off down the garden, where they wanted to go. This show ran through summer 2021 and inspired the 2022 touring installation project, Marie in the Margins.

Story Fragments

The ExploreTheArch multi-disciplinary performance team picked sections of Marie de France's visceral text that had stuck in minds through lockdown, finding their chosen fragment a corner of the house in which to nestle. The audience viewed through window panes and doorways until the stories leap out and went where they want to go.

A C12 adventure writer, a C21 audience

In the first of our works exploring medieval adventure writer Dame Marie, we focused on her unconventional protagonists — a youth uninterested in love, a woman who says something she regrets and a steady partner who is a closet werewolf three days a week – all pushing boundaries to honour their unconventional selves.

The first show after covid lockdown, the audience viewed through window panes and doorways into corners of the house until the stories leapt out and went where they wanted to go.

This show ran through summer 2021. It inspires the 2022 touring installation project, Marie in the Margins

Pen in Mouth

The contemporary view of medieval book production tends to be of monks bowed assiduously over manuscripts but there is a forgotten history of women at work. Research confirms female scribes at work - unsigned work likely created by women as well as men. Recent finding of lapis lazuli, the precious, ultramarine pigment in a woman’s teeth buried at a German monastery strengthens the case for a female workforce. Who hasn’t put the wrong end of a pen or paintbrush in their mouth as they looked at their work?

Explore the forgotten female writers and scribers working 100 years after the Norman invasion of 1066.