Elisa and the Beast

In the archive of Performance Art I found Deborah Esmeades work "Lucy and the Beast" from 1995, NY. Interpreting and embodying her work made me question bodily restrictions that I am not used to and challenged my insecurity of speaking on stage. During the contextual research I discovered a horrific case of child abuse, where the girl, named Elisa, was killed by her mother just 3 days before Deborah´s performance. The media refered to Elisa´s case as the Cindarella case. I cannot know if Deborah meant to refer to Elisa´s case but in the performance there is a part refering to Cindarella. It combines various tales, self, persona and character, and fictional-historic stories under the structural and thematic umbrella of the Little Mermaid. Dealing with chronic pain since over 1,5 years I feel connected and inspired by the original version of the Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen.