On making Marvellous: A performance about old age and death made out of conversation, improvisation and distillation

Abstract

Here we respond to the making of Marvellous (2021), a theatre work about ageing, and reflect on mothering and daughtering generally and our relationships with our own nonagenarian mothers in particular. Using autobiographical and life writing techniques in three voices we (the makers) develop the content of Marvellous to portray the intimacies of ageing and approaching dying, of memory and forgetting. We use this opportunity to contextualise Marvellous within each of our theatrical histories mirroring the fragmentary form of our theatre piece.