In late October, 2024, Nguyễn convened with artist Theo Eshetu, her mentor, for a work-stay at the German Academy Rome Villa Massimo. There, they fine-tuned the project’s details and shared insights into her work-in-progress with a local audience. Watch the work-stay video here:
Trà Nguyễn
Shapes of the Unknown
Mother Doesn’t Know Mnemosyne
A narration of complex relations between female figures of differing histories.
Trà Nguyễn
Trà Nguyễn is a Vietnamese theatermaker whose plays and set designs often resemble installations in which the performers move and act excruciatingly slowly.
Nguyễn developed a method called Verbatim Bodies, which posits the emergence of differing characters from a performer’s holding of space, thus allowing for a multitude of narrative possibilities.
Her short play evokes the Greek mythological figure Mnemosyne (Memory, the Mother of the nine muses) to narrate the complex relations between female figures of differing histories. It also serves as an experiment: if Verbatim Bodies works, the audience should be able to access a multitude of narratives arising from a few performing bodies.
