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Dementia,
Narrative and
Performance
Janet Gibson
Dementia, Narrative and Performance
Janet Gibson
Dementia, Narrative
and Performance
Janet Gibson
UTS Insearch
University of Technology
Sydney, NSW, Australia
ISBN 978-3-030-46546-9 ISBN 978-3-030-46547-6 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46547-6
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.
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
The arguments on which this book turns were germinated in the

Alzheimer’s diagnosis, institutionalisation, and death of my mother
Barbara Gibson, a woman committed to social justice and fervent about
the theatre and its role in awakening peoples’ minds to inequity and big-
otry. The arguments in this book were also fostered by my interest in the
verbatim work of Moisés Kaufman (The Laramie Project) with whom I
had worked as an actor in Women in Beckett at Theater for the New City
(his first Tectonic project) in New York in 1991. The book’s genesis was a
strange mix indeed but going off the beaten track often produces thought-
provoking products, one of which I hope this book to be.
So many people nurtured this project. The book had its first life as a
PhD thesis undertaken at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, under
the keen eyes of Yuji Sone, my principal supervisor, with additional insight
contributed by Nicole Matthews in the role of associate supervisor. I have
the greatest respect for their intelligence, integrity, and humanity.
Although dementia is not their focus, two very important scholarly
works inspired my writing: James Thompson’s Performance Affects (2009)
and Deirdre Heddon’s Autobiography and Performance (2008). I was
thrilled when they agreed to be on my PhD examination panel. I really
appreciated the enthusiasm with which they greeted my work and their
encouragement to find a wider platform for my ideas. Likewise,
many thanks to Michael Balfour, another of my PhD examiners, for gener-
ous help and advice when I needed it during the writing of this book.
Anne Basting’s commitment to people living with dementia and their
performances in everyday life and on various stages sustains much of my
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
Australian disability discussion group members, for inspiring and chal-

lenging conversations that have helped me no end in fashioning my think-
ing. Caroline Wake: thank you for giving me your valuable time on several
occasions to help me fine-tune some ideas about verbatim theatre.
I have been lucky enough in the last few years to be able to attend two
conferences held by the Dementia and Cultural Narrative Network,
steered by Sarah Falcus and Katsura Sako. I have had such stimulating
discussions with many people in that network, especially Mao Hui Deng,
Cristina Douglas, and Bridie Moore.
UTS colleagues too have cheered me on—David Wheeler, Craig
Johnson, Susan Sherringham, Kevin Alexander Su, Adrian Kelly, Deb
Nixon, Bhuva Narayan, and Gail Kenning, among many others. Aurora
Murphy helped me clarify my arguments in my PhD drafts, and moti-
vated me to extend my ideas to a broader audience. Thanks especially to
Tim Laurence, my Dean of Studies, for giving me time off to write and
taking joyful excitement and pride in my authoring of this book. I am very
appreciative of having had Palgrave editor Vicky Bates cheerfully answer
many of my questions and queries, and more recently, Jack Heeney.
Thanks also to Janet Hutchinson for a perceptive editorial eye on one of
the drafts. And to the anonymous reviewer of the final draft of the book:
thanks so much for helping me think more rigorously about theatre of the
real, and for the morale- boosting comments.
Friends and family—thank you all, but especially Taylor, Margaret,
Penny, and Benjamin. I would like to specifically thank my sister MaryJane
for reading and commenting on several chapters as we sat staring at the
beautiful Yamba Ocean on our one-week writing and laughing holiday on
the north coast of New South Wales, Australia. Miss you Roddy, my dar-
ling brother, and wish you were still alive to see this book published.
Thanks also to Sandy who helped birth this baby and to my partner in life
Julia who is, well, everything to me.
Contents
1 My Mother’s Story, My Story 1
Part I Dementia, Identity and Narrative 33
2 Recasting Senility: The Genesis of the ‘Right Kind’ of

Dementia Story 35
3 Narrative Regimes 59
Part II Dementia in Performance 91
4 Staging the ‘Reality’ of Dementia 93
5 Staging Dementia Voices in Australia: Missing the Bus to

David Jones, Theatre Kantanka, and Sundowner, KAGE133
6 Mapping Applied Performance in Dementia Cultures177
7 “I Don’t Want to Disappear”: Dementia and Public

Autobiographical Performance215
xi
xii Contents
Part III Dementia as Performance 245
8 Rehearsing a Theory of Dementia as Performance247
9 Revisiting My Mother’s Story, My Story269
Index 279
Abbreviations
ABC Australian Broadcasting Commission

ACT Australian Capital Territory
AD Alzheimer’s disease
AIHW Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
BPSD Behavioural and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia
CCTV Closed circuit television
CD Compact disc
CDS Center for Digital Storytelling
DAI Dementia Alliance International
DASNI Dementia Advocacy and Support Network
DS Digital storytelling
EDIE Educational Dementia Immersive Experience
GPS Global Positioning System
LR Life Review
LSW Life story work
MBDJ Missing the Bus to David Jones
MCM Meeting of Cultural Ministers
MMSE Mini-Mental State Examination
NGOs Non-government organisations
NHPF National Health Performance Framework
NIDA National Institute of Dramatic Art, Sydney
PTSD Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
RT Reminiscence Therapy
SDWG Scottish Dementia Working Group
xiii
xiv Abbreviations
TfD Theatre for Development

TWIMC To Whom I May Concern®
VaD Vascular dementia
WHO World Health Organization
List of Figures
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
Fig. 6.2 ‘Elmer Anderson’s dream’. Photo by Skydiving Photos. Used

with permission of Vicki Sanchez. (The photo shows an old man
with short white hair wearing black glasses over which is a clear
face mask with blue plastic arms. He has a bright blue t-shirt on.
He is skydiving. A man accompanies him on the dive. This man
is on his back. The blue plane out of which they have both
just jumped is above their heads, to the left of the picture) 201
Fig. 7.1 To Whom I May Concern® Hill House production. Photo by
Janet Gibson. Copyright Janet Gibson. (The photo shows two
women and one man sitting (in front of an audience) on high
stools with their scripts on stands and microphones in front of
them. Behind them are two large windows, which are open,
some paintings on the wall, a clock, and a vase of pink flowers) 230
CHAPTER 1
My Mother’s Story, My Story
My mother, Barbara Gibson, was diagnosed with ‘probable’ Alzheimer’s

disease (AD) in 2008. A diagnosis of AD is usually traumatic, both for the
person and for their family; it was so for my mother, my siblings, and
myself. My mother entered the dementia wing of an aged care facility a
year later. Decisions around institutionalisation are not easy either. We
were told by the nursing staff that, at the end of her first day in the facility,
Mum put on yellow washing up gloves and, with a hammer in hand (where
had she found that?), proceeded to the door of the wing, which could only
be unlocked by entering a number code on a key pad, and tried to smash
her way out in what appeared to be a (dramatic) bid for freedom. It didn’t
succeed. She stayed in the dementia wing for over a year, moving to the
palliative care wing for the last three weeks of her life. With a bolus of
morphine dripping pain relief into her belly, unable to get out of bed or
recognise anyone, and struggling for breath, she finally died on 4 May
2010. She was eighty-one years old.
This experience turned my life around. While not evident at the time, I
now see that, as one of my mother’s care partners,1 I entered a new ‘real-
ity’ where affect was the grammar of the communication space, not cogni-
tion. Fact merged with fantasy: I found it was not useful to insist on
distinctions between them. For instance, when my mother talked as if her
Aunt Enid was still alive, which she was not, I learned to accept this fic-
tion. Insisting that Enid was not alive only distressed my mother. She was
alive for my mother so that was ‘the truth’. Many ‘liminal’ spaces like these
© The Author(s) 2020 1

J. Gibson, Dementia, Narrative and Performance,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46547-6_1
2 J. GIBSON
emerged in our time together: some between imagination and memory;

some between the present and the past (but not quite past); and some
between the woman who I began to see as ‘not my mother’ and also ‘not
not my mother’ (after Schechner 1985, 110–113).
The woman who was ‘not my mother’ showed infrequent exhibitionist
tendencies and occasional murderous inclinations. When we were out
shopping once, she grabbed my breasts, then hers, and asserted that hers
were bigger than mine. Another time, Mum was found by the nursing
staff trying to strangle Mavis, another woman with dementia, who only
had one phrase, repeated ad nauseam, day in and day out: “la di da, la di
di”. But the woman who was ‘not not my mother’ still exhibited many
familiar behaviours. She loved performing—as she had done for all her
children as we were growing up—joyously dancing and singing along to
any of the songs on her Nat King Cole CD. She was still generous and
compassionate. She spent a week in the facility, on and off, by the bedside
of a dying woman, comforting her by stroking her hands and face.
Over time then, I began to comprehend the ‘performativity’ of demen-
tia, finding fledgling connections between my mother’s behaviours and
performance theorist Richard Schechner’s notion of performativity.
Schechner argues this “occurs in places and situations not traditionally
marked as ‘performing arts’ … mak[ing] it increasingly difficult to sustain
a distinction between appearance and reality, facts and make-believe, sur-
faces and depths” (2013, 24). Furthermore, in living through this experi-
ence, I noticed that ‘our’ story2 did not match those popularly available,
which intrigued me. Gradually, I came to prefer many aspects of my rela-
tionship with the ‘new’ mother to whom Alzheimer’s introduced me,
which is not to say that I saw AD as a gift. Dementia has always been, and
probably always will be, a frightening experience with immense physical
and psychological challenges for the person diagnosed and for that per-
son’s friend, partner, spouse, or family member (Basting 2009, 2).3 From
a biomedical perspective, dementia is a clinical ‘umbrella’ term for a pro-
gressive neurodegenerative syndrome containing a constellation of symp-
toms that may be caused by a number of underlying diseases such as AD
(Bitenc 2020, 8). I examine this perspective, the pre-eminent way we
understand the condition today, in more detail in Chap. 2, along with
other cultural meanings usually yoked to the biomedical viewpoint—
essentially those of tragedy, loss, and deficit. But viewing dementia as an
unqualified tragedy, along with notions of ‘losing’ the mother we once
knew, which was how my siblings and I greeted the diagnosis when we
1 MY MOTHER’S STORY, MY STORY 3
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:
a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being

can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and
skills within an institutional framework characterised by strong private prop-
erty rights, free markets, and free trade … [I]f markets do not exist (in areas
such as land, water, education, health care…) then they must be created, by
state action if necessary. (Harvey 2007, 2)
Neoliberalism is a pervasive global ideology, referring to the privileged

position governments have given to markets in determining global eco-
nomic, political, and social policies. It has also been “incorporated into the
common-sense way many of us interpret, live in, and understand the
world” (ibid., 3). Since the 1970s, there has been an emphatic turn to
neoliberalism. Under its flag, performance as a “mode of power”
(McKenzie 2001, 25) propagates a type of ‘imperative to perform’ in
4 J. GIBSON
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
Focal Points, Challenges, and Contributions

This book then is the result of my own encounter with dementia and its
stories, along with my interest, as a theatre and performance studies
scholar, in how these stories are used on professional stages and in
applied theatre interventions and socially engaged performance prac-
tices. Of note is that I favour the term applied theatre and/or perfor-
mance throughout this book over newer terms which are constantly
emerging in this dynamic field, such as “socially engaged performance”
(Stuart Fisher and Thompson 2020) because the ideas which I either
contest or support in the analysis of the particular community-based
theatre and performance practices I investigate here have emerged from

applied theatre and performance scholarship. Also of importance to note
is that I use ‘story’ and ‘narrative’ interchangeably. Certain literary stud-
ies scholars define these terms discretely, with ‘story’ as the events that
happen and ‘narrative’ as the showing or telling of those events involving
sequence (movement from beginning to finish), space (detours from the
sequence), and time (Cobley 2001, 5–17). For philosopher Paul Ricoeur
(1988), ‘narrative’ is time; it is about expectation and memory, and not
just paying attention to events on a timeline. However, I am guided here
by Arthur Frank’s contention that the words ‘narrative’ and ‘story’ over-
lap so frequently, that sustaining divisions between them in consistent
usage is impossible (2010, 200). Frank also refuses a formal definition of
stories, contending that stories, in their very ontology, constantly evade
classification.
Most importantly, I do not aim to provide a comprehensive analysis of
the ways in which dementia is represented in theatre per se, nor do I seek
to catalogue all the various kinds of art interventions and practices cur-
rently used in care homes or community initiatives. What I do aim to do
in this book, overall, is seek to challenge the hegemony of the ‘right kind’
of dementia story in both art and applied theatre domains, in Western
contexts specifically, and in “theatre of the real” (Martin 2013) offerings
primarily, in order to reimagine other stories. In short, this kind of theatre
“recycle(s) reality” whether personal or communal, historical or political
(ibid., 5). By ‘hegemony, I mean the process by which the ‘right kind’ of
dementia story maintains its power, through the establishment, construc-
tion, and regulation of norms and material processes via the media, eco-
nomics, social roles, and other such means. Certain literary studies scholars
define these terms discretely, with ‘story’ as the events that happen and
‘narrative’ as the showing or telling of those events involving sequence
(movement from beginning to finish), space (detours from the sequence),
and time (Cobley 2001, 5–17). For philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1988),
‘narrative’ is time; it is about expectation and memory, and not just paying
attention to events on a timeline. However, I am guided here by Arthur
Frank’s contention that the words ‘narrative’ and ‘story’ overlap so fre-
quently, that sustaining divisions between them in consistent usage is
impossible (2010, 200). Frank also refuses a formal definition of stories,
contending that stories, in their very ontology, constantly evade
classification.
6 J. GIBSON
What I do aim to do in this book, overall, is to challenge the hegemony

of the ‘right kind’ of dementia story in both art and applied theatre
domains, in Western contexts specifically, and in “theatre of the real”
(Martin 2013) offerings primarily, in order to reimagine other stories. In
short, this kind of theatre “recycle(s) reality” whether personal or com-
munal, historical or political (ibid., 5). By ‘hegemony’, I mean the process
by which the ‘right kind’ of dementia story maintains its power, through
the establishment, construction, and regulation of norms and material
processes via the media, economics, social roles, and other such means.
Accordingly, to challenge the ‘right kind’ of dementia story and rei-
magine other kinds, I situate and explore the contributions that theatre
and performance can and do make in responding to and representing peo-
ple with dementia. But this is no easy enterprise. If, in part, the figure of
the person living with dementia is produced in and through cultural per-
formances, how then can theatrical performances, as cultural artefacts,
best act to represent and/or respond to that figure? ‘Cultural perfor-
mance’ as used here refers to the ways a culture articulates and presents
itself, encompassing not only cultural and artistic performances but also
religious, ritual, ceremonial, and political practices, as well as stories and so
on, as first defined by anthropologist Milton Singer (1972, 7) and later
taken up by various theatre studies scholars, including Erika Fischer-Lichte
(2008) and Jan Cohen-Cruz (2010).
The ‘right kind’ of dementia story is one of these cultural performances.
The issues I have with this type of story underpin my pursuit of the follow-
ing questions throughout the book: To what extent does this production/
intervention tell the ‘right kind’ of dementia story or disrupt it? Why? And
how is this achieved? However, within the overarching charters of the
above questions, my paramount enterprise is to drill down to a specific
interrogation of the troubling and productive nexus between words, sto-
ries, identity, and dementia using verbatim theatre productions, autobio-
graphical performance practices, and other “theatre of the real” offerings
(Martin 2013) as laboratories.
Given the complexity of the above enterprise, my analysis is limited to
case studies from a few Western industrialised societies (mostly Australia
and the USA). Any cross-cultural comparisons further afield (say with
India, Africa, or Asia) would have meant trying to incorporate into this
very pointed study too wide a range of dissimilar cultural and economic
differences, sociocultural practices, and conceptions of identity, selves, and
so on. Though very much a worthwhile endeavour, this focus would have
been overwhelming and unmanageable. My attention to the West is driven

by a desire to investigate the problem of cognitive disability within “hyper-
cognitive” (Post, 1995) societies where selfhood and identity are under-
stood to depend on cognition and memory and where narrative and
performance play an important role in this arrangement.
Through a primary focus on “theatre of the real” offerings (ibid.), the
book makes a key contribution to “theatre of the real” (ibid.) literature
and to forms of the latter which foreground the words of real-life agents.
Some of these forms may be further distinguished as “Theatre of Real
People”, which scholars Ulrike Garde and Meg Mumford (2016, 24–25)
declare to be a subcategory of Martin’s uber category “theatre of the real”
(ibid.). “Theatre of Real People” is:
a prevalent performance mode that exists across diverse and emergent

genres, including autobiographical theatre … community-based theatre,
delegated performance, documentary theatre, ethnographic performance,
participatory performance, refugee theatre, reality theatre, re-enactments,
testimonial theatre, theatre of everyday experts and verbatim theatre. (Garde
and Mumford 2016, 6)
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
their stories in ways acceptable to the normalising regimes in which they

are situated? As a likely consequence of immense exactions in this regard,
little verbatim theatre or other types of “theatre of the real” (ibid.) have
emerged from the stories and words of people with dementia. Moreover,
in a ‘Catch 22’ situation, this shortage of theatre productions has impacted
scholarship. Despite strong scholarly attention to the performance of life
stories from a range of identities—one such example being refugee theatre
scholarship (see Jeffers 2006, 2008, 2009, 2012; Gilbert and Lo 2007;
Burvill 2008; Hazou 2009; Schaefer 2009; Wake 2010b, 2013; Balfour
2013; Balfour and Woodrow 2013)—the links between narrative, demen-
tia, identity, and “theatre of the real” (Martin 2013) have received scant
notice to date in the literature. Anne Basting (2001, 2003, 2006, 2009)
remains a leading voice in this area of academic pursuit.7 When the scarcely
explored relationship between narrative and the construction of ‘reality’ as
‘normalcy’ is uncovered, it becomes apparent just how deeply this rela-
tionship regulates “theatre of the real” (ibid.) practice. So too, many ethi-
cal, political, and aesthetic issues arise from the paradox of theatres that
rely on narratives from ‘real’ people being coupled with people commonly
deemed not to be ‘real’ (or even people).
In part because of this negative stereotyping, people with dementia
rarely take to the stage to perform their own stories in professional theatre
settings, as have some refugees or people with disability, but they do fre-
quently ‘perform’ them in the closed worlds of institutions in applied the-
atre interventions and, occasionally, on the more exposed stages the
internet provides and/or in community settings. In applied theatre schol-
arship, the regnant function of the autobiographical story in dementia
‘cultures’, that is, the imperative to tell and remember as memory and
cognition fades, has been generally, and paradoxically, overlooked, while
being closely examined in reference to other cultures and trauma (see
Thompson 2004, 2009; Bharucha 2011; Stuart Fisher 2011; Jeffers
2012). When it has been studied, Erving Goffman’s theory of the rela-
tional self has been used as the principal theoretical lens with which to
positively re-frame the person with dementia as a communal storyteller
(Basting 2001).8
In this book, I hope to rectify the above-mentioned oversights and, in
so doing, make three distinct contributions to the literature. As mentioned
earlier, the first is my investigation into the relationship between stories
and the materialisation of ‘reality’ as ‘normalcy’ in relation to how stories
constitute selves. ‘Normalcy’ is a word used frequently in this book,
especially in reference to conceptions of the ‘real’ and ‘reality’. My under-

standing of ‘normalcy’ is that it is not an unchanging property of human
beings. As many disability studies theorists have argued (see Davis 1995;
Wendell 1996; Garland Thomson 1997, 2002; McRuer 2006), various
discursive regimes, such as those of religion, politics, law, education, and
medicine, have designated certain bodies to be ‘normal’ and others not,
with the assignment of ‘normalcy’ fluctuating according to history and
culture.
The second contribution is my use of dementia as a filter through which
certain matters in “theatre of the real” (Martin 2013) and applied theatre
and performance literatures can be passed and, as a result, be catalysed,
advancing current debates and problematising certain areas that have been
taken for granted or overlooked. In this way, yet another cultural product
about dementia—this book—is constrained from acting out a story of
deficit and lack; instead, within its academic margins, dementia is allowed
some agency. For example, verbatim theatre practices, often demarcated in
facile ways, are unsettled by encounters with dementia. The third distinc-
tive offering I make is the application of Richard Schechner’s theories of
“restored behaviour” (1985, 37), “double negativity” (ibid., 110), and
“performance consciousness” (ibid., 6) to people with dementia: his theo-
ries are principally used to rehearse a theory of dementia as performance.
Here, ‘performance’ is understood in terms of its utopian potential rather
than as a “mode of power” (McKenzie 2001, 25).
However, I propose that “performance consciousness” (Schechner
1985, 6) can be a vital way of recasting people with dementia in terms of
possibility, not just in terms of tragedy and loss, by reframing certain
behaviours and actions as creative adaptations rather than as deficit exem-
plars of insidious diseases.
Theoretical Contexts, Disciplinary Locations,

and Approach
This book is situated at the intersection of theatre and performance stud-

ies with reticulation to dementia, age, and disability studies, as well as
selected references to refugee theatre studies. Individual chapters are posi-
tioned at various points on this grid depending on the problem being
investigated. In Chaps. 3 and 8 I ask: How might theatre and performance
studies shift or add to both popular and theoretical conceptions of
10 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).
As important as ‘personhood’ is in providing a critique of the dominant

biomedical paradigm, it minimises the importance of the body as a source
of agency, and the ways in which people with dementia may convey their
humanity through gestures, body habits, and nonverbal body language.
These missing elements are well captured in the embodiment approach
which also focuses on “the social construction of surveillance, cultural
priorities and discursive conventions [and]… the potentialities of the body
for creativity and self-expression” (Martin et al. 2013, 283). Pioneers of
this approach include Pia Kontos (2005, 2012) and Annette Leibing (2008).
Relational care principles are also surfacing in many care homes: for
example, see the film It takes a community (2014) based on work in Arcare
Care Home, Helensvale, Queensland, Australia. Arguably, these principles
are related to the impact of feminist care ethics, including the work of Nel
Noddings (1986, 2013), Joan Tronto (1993, 2013), and Eva Feder Kittay
(1999, 2014), among others.11 At the core of this approach is the idea of
our essential connectedness to others, an idea sidelined in the prevailing
biomedical models. Finally, there is the emergence of scholarship around
social citizenship which builds on Kitwood’s ideas but sees the person as
an “active social agent in the broad context of their lifestyle, lifecourse,
social networks and community activities”, not just a “passive care recipi-
ent” (Bartlett and O’Connor 2010, 4). Ruth Bartlett and Deborah
O’Connor (2010) are key proponents of this approach.
Contemporary age studies scholars12 generally see ageing as constructed
not only biologically and chronologically, but also socially (Basting 1998).
Four main approaches to the study of age have been identified: cultural
age; age as narrative; the performativity of age; and the materiality of age
(Swinnen and Port 2012, 12). In part encouraged by leading age studies
scholar Margaret Morganroth Gullette’s call, “[a]bout age as a perfor-
mance, we need to start the arguments” (2004, 159), I track the idea of
the performance of age and its performativity in tandem with certain other
scholars who have theorised in this direction. (I also draw on some of the
other approaches, including the materiality of age and cultural age.) The
notion of performativity defines age “not only as a state of being but
through acts of doing” (Swinnen and Port 2012, 12; original emphasis).
In general, this approach enlists the theories of feminist post-structuralist
scholar Judith Butler in Gender trouble (1990) and Bodies that matter
(1993) where identity is an effect of “cultural apparatus[es]” (1990, 199)
and not nature. In age and performance scholarship, various iterations of
Butler’s theories of performativity have been worked with, expanded
12 J. GIBSON
upon, and, in some cases, challenged, under such monikers as “age-

effects” (Moore 2014, n.p.); “temporal depth” (Basting 1998, 22); “sig-
nificant form” (Cristofovici 1999, 275); and “absence” (Woodward 1991,
53–71).13
One significant area of dispute in contemporary age studies is the
agreed starting point as to when old age begins. “To put it bluntly: what
counts as old in one society … may not count as old in another” (Mangan
2013, 23), and this applies to non-contemporary as well as non-Western
societies. Across time and cultures, definitions of old age change showing
that as soon as one moves away from the purely biological or the socio-
legal (e.g. at present in Australia one is entitled to get an age pension at
sixty-five), definitions are as much about meaning as anything (ibid., 25).
But most scholars in age studies would agree that a chronological defini-
tion of what constitutes old age is not sufficient. There are at least biologi-
cal, medical, moral, social, legal, civic, and economic factors to be
considered in any definition. Of concern also is the fact that old age does
not form a single category. It covers a broad range of years as well as levels
of fitness in terms of physical and mental conditions. Infirmity can occur
for people in their sixties, while those in their nineties may remain fit.
Furthermore, disputes have arisen over terminology. Barbara Macdonald
argues that ‘older’ is both euphemistic and “the clearest sign of our shame
around ageing” (in Macdonald and Rich 2001, x). Bridie Moore argues
that the comparative descriptor ‘older’ can be seen to construct the “old
person in relation to a projected age-normative citizen” (2018, 42) who is
usually young. In this book, I generally refer to people with dementia
without either descriptor as people may be diagnosed with dementia at
any age. However, given that the majority of people diagnosed with
dementia are over the age of sixty-five and that most of the case studies
examined in this book are connected to age-related dementia, I deploy the
word ‘old’ when it is appropriate. I also sporadically use ‘elder’ and its
offshoots (e.g. ‘elderly’) as the term expresses respect for the aged, seen
clearly in its use in Indigenous (Australian) communities.
Unlike age studies, disability studies is a well-established academic dis-
cipline, fraught with complexities and arguments about issues such as dis-
ability definitions, the role of impairment and the body, and the origins of
disability. There are two main models: the medical model, which defines
disability as biological impairment (Depoy et al. 2003, 177), and the social
model, in which disability is seen as a consequence of social oppression
(Hughes and Paterson 1997). However, most contemporary disability
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
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
include comments made available on YouTube or in journalists’ inter-

views, as the discourses produced by these media accounts form part of
the social context of the performances. I principally rely on the analysis
and comparison of a range of sources rather than depending on interviews
and similar primary materials, although information from personal com-
munication with selected individuals does feature in this book. I also occa-
sionally theorise audience reception, including my own, especially when I
have attended the performances.
Mapping the Arguments

This book has three main aims corresponding to the three main sections
into which it is divided. Part I, ‘Dementia, Identity and Narrative’, has
two chapters. Chapter 2 offers necessary contextual information about
dementia including biomedical explanations of dementia and its diseases;
an extended definition of the ‘right kind’ of dementia story; the historical,
social, and geocultural conditions behind the growth of the Alzheimer’s
industry in the West; and a critical exploration of the sociopolitical and
economic drivers of the current dementia ‘crisis’. Chapter 3 focuses on
what I term ‘narrative regimes’ in Western societies. I argue that stories
play a seminal role in the creation and maintenance of identity as ‘nor-
malcy’, with important political and ethical ramifications for people with
dementia, and “theatre of the real” (Martin 2013) representations of
them. I also examine the relationship between stories and selves to ascer-
tain how selves might be rethought so that they are not contingent on the
production of lucid self-narratives, consistent language, and truthful
memories. This chapter critiques the notion of the ‘Narrative Self’ and
points to the hegemonic role played by reminiscence narratives in demen-
tia ‘cultures’, keeping people with dementia firmly moored to the past and
ignoring or sidelining their present experiences.
Part II, ‘Dementia in Performance’, comprises four separate Chaps. (4,
5, 6, and 7). My aim here is to scan both contemporary critical studies
about and practices of applied theatre and “theatre of the real” (Martin
2013)—including postdramatic varieties—to determine what it means
when verbatim and autobiographical performance practices encounter
storytellers who are considered, culturally, to be ‘unreliable narrators’. I
probe whether these practices are useful to reinforce a sense of ‘self’ for
those deemed no longer to have one. While acknowledging that profes-
sional art theatre productions and applied theatre and performance
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.
Part III, ‘Dementia as Performance’, comprises Chaps. 8 and 9. In

Chap. 8, I rehearse a theory of dementia as performance, exploring how
the ‘gaze’ of theatre and performance could be a way of challenging the
deficit gaze of biomedicine and of reframing certain behaviours and actions
in terms of possibilities (vis à vis Jill Dolan’s “utopian performatives”
(2001) and Schechner’s “performance consciousness” (1985, 6)). This
chapter also examines modes of everyday performance, including demen-
tia activism. The concluding Chap. 9 reexamines my mother’s story in
terms of performance, identity, memory, and narrative.
Resisting the ‘Right Kind’ of Dementia Story

In summary, this book considers how people with dementia are repre-
sented as well as the emerging ways in which they are re/presenting them-
selves, primarily in “theatre of the real” (Martin 2013) and applied theatre.
It also assesses the extent to which the ‘right kind’ of dementia story is
being affirmed or resisted in these representations. In public theatre sites,
as well as in settings like aged care facilities, attention to how stories are
told about, with, and by people living with dementia can open up discur-
sive spaces where the ethical, political, and aesthetic ramifications of the
telling of these stories can be made apparent, and perhaps altered, for the
benefit of those who live with age-related dementia. I argue that dementia
and the people living with it are produced in and through these stories as
much as through biology. Moreover, I propose that the grip of the bio-
medical and even the ‘personhood’ gazes on dementia need to be softened
and new ways of understanding found and embraced for futures to be
imagined differently for people living with dementia. The tools explored
for creating such different futures and reimagining the identities of people
living with dementia are performance related and performative.
Importantly, this book aligns with expectations for theatre and perfor-
mance practices and sites to be possible spaces of (possible) transforma-
tion. As theatre scholar Emma Cox (2012, 120) argues, “theatrical
performance … inhere[s] in material functions (as social practice) and
symbolic functions (as representation)”. For Cox, theatre is, “in Crane’s
words, ‘embodied enaction’ that constitutes the reality-making cognitive
systems of practitioners and audiences” (ibid., 121), and it is within these
systems that the transformative capacity of hope in regard to the effects of
performance is enmeshed. However, hope needs to be tempered by respect
for the many issues at play when any narratives—but especially those of
20 J. GIBSON
trauma, victimhood, crisis, and displacement—are performed. This can be

achieved through attention to the people behind the story being per-
formed, as well as to its frames of reception. In other words, attention
must be paid to questions about who is served by, who is involved with,
and who is positioned by these performed narratives. Furthermore, these
questions must moderate any naïve or reductionist ideas about theatrical
performances as simple sites of transformation.
In the twenty-first century, discourses on narrative, disability, ageing,
crisis, identity, and performance intersect in a complex layering of thinking
and practice, and they determine how theatre and performance products
about dementia function in the world. These discourses are tied to whether
performances in dementia facilities are sanctioned or theatre for public
stages is funded, which in turn impacts on whether the story we hear
about dementia in these theatrical sites is the ‘right kind’: that is, a story
which risks reinforcing the power of a hegemonic and authoritarian poli-
tics, an ethics of devaluation, and an aesthetics of aversion and/or tragedy
towards those who live with a diagnosis of dementia. My aim in this book
is to bring the fields of theatre and performance, age, dementia, and dis-
ability studies into a productive conversation. In so doing, I hope to make
it a little more difficult to think and act as we have habitually thought and
done regarding dementia and the people who live with the condition.
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
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
(2014): it helps assess whether a specific representation of age might admit

the possibility of agency for old subjects. Kathleeen Woodward’s term
“absence” is a reflection on the rejected, and therefore missing, ageing
body (1991, 53–71). Woodward suggests that at the end stage of life,
comparable to Lacan’s stage of infancy but in reversal, the old person
rejects their mirror image as not being a true representation of self. This
rejection brings on a psychic crisis (a dislocation of the imaginary).
Woodward sees the mirror stage of old age as “inherently triangular,
involving the gaze of others as well as the two images of oneself”
(Woodward, 1991, 69) (i.e. the one looking in the mirror and the one
looking back).
14. Scholarship on performance and disability is more prominent today than it
was ten to fifteen years ago. Established scholars in the terrain include
Carrie Sandahl (2003, 2004, 2010) and Petra Kuppers (2003, 2011), with
recent work emerging from Collette Conroy (2009), Dave Calvert (2009),
Arseli Dokumaci (2013, 2017), Yvonne Schmidt (2017), and Kate
Maguire-Rosier (2016), among others. Some key issues of concern emerg-
ing from the scholarship include representing disability in novel ways to
challenge current orthodoxies; the uneasy relationship between disability,
disability politics, and the dramatic arts; the integration and inclusion of
disabled people in drama and issues to do with the subversion of assump-
tions about disability in drama pieces; the role of non-disabled allies and
professionals; the ‘performativity’ of disability; and the concept of ‘crip’
aesthetics and alternative dramaturgies as a challenge to able-bodied aes-
thetics and elite drama (Roulstone 2010, 753).
15. Some social gerontologists have recognised different stages of old age,
determining categories like the “fit elderly” and the “frail elderly”
(Woodhouse et al. 1988, 505 cited in Mangan 2013, 26–27). The picture
is further complicated by definitions of what constitutes old age being
determined by historical and cultural relativism (Mangan 2013, 23).
16. Diana Taylor has described this difference as between that of probing per-
formance as an object or ontology and deploying it as a method or episte-
mology (2003, 2–3).
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Occasionally the plant tissues have assumed a black and
somewhat ragged appearance, giving the impression of charred
wood. A section of a recent burnt piece of wood resembles very
closely some of the fossil twigs from the coal seam nodules. It is
possible that in such cases we have portions of mineralised tissues
which were first burnt in a forest fire or by lightning and then
infiltrated with a petrifying solution. An example of one of these black
petrified plants is shown in fig. 74 B. Chap. x. In many of the fossil
plants there are distinct traces of fungus or bacterial ravages, and
occasionally the section of a piece of mineralised wood shows
circular spaces or canals which have the appearance of being the
work of some wood-eating animal, and small oval bodies sometimes
occur in such spaces which may be the coprolites of the
xylophagous intruder. (Fig. 24, p. 107.)
FOSSIL PLANTS IN VOLCANIC ASH.
It is well known to geologists that during the Permian and

Carboniferous periods the southern portion of Scotland was the
scene of widespread volcanic activity. Forests were overwhelmed by
lava-streams or showers of ash, and in some districts tree stems and
broken plant fragments became sealed up in a volcanic matrix.
Laggan Bay in the north-east corner of the Isle of Arran, and
Pettycur a short distance from Burntisland on the north shore of the
Firth of Forth, are two localities where petrified plants of
Carboniferous age occur in such preservation as allows of a minute
investigation of their internal structure. The occurrence of plants in
the former locality was first discovered by Mr Wünsch of Glasgow;
the fossils occur in association with hardened shales and beds of
ash, and are often exceedingly well preserved[127]. In fig. 18 is
reproduced a sketch of a hollow tree trunk from Arran, probably a
Lepidodendron stem, in which only the outer portion of the bark has
been preserved, while the inner cortical tissues have been removed
and the space occupied by volcanic detritus.
Fig. 18. Diagrammatic sketch of a slab cut from a fossil stem
(Lepidodendron?) from Laggan Bay. e, Imperfectly preserved bark of a
large stem, extending in patches round the periphery of the specimen;
the oval and circular bodies in the interior are the xylem portions of the
central cylinders of Lepidodendron stems, x1, primary wood, x2,
secondary wood. From a specimen in the Binney collection,
Woodwardian Museum, Cambridge. ⅕ nat. size.
The smaller cylindrical structures in the interior of the hollow trunk
are the central woody cylinders of Lepidodendroid trees; each
consists of an axial pith surrounded by a band of primary wood and a
broader zone of secondary wood. One of the axes probably
belonged to the stem of which only the shell has been preserved, the
others must have come from other trees and may have been floated
in by water[128]. The microscopic details of the wood and outer cortex
have in this instance been preserved in a calcareous material, which
was no doubt derived by water percolating through the volcanic ash.
It is frequently found that in fossil trees or twigs a separation of the
tissues has taken place along such natural lines of weakness as the
cambium or the phellogen, before the petrifying medium had time to
permeate the entire structure. Tree stems recently killed by lava
streams during volcanic eruptions at the present day supply a
parallel with the Palaeozoic forest trees of Carboniferous times.
Guillemard in describing a volcanic crater in Celebes, speaks of
burnt trees still standing in the lava stream, “so charred at the base
of the trunk that we could easily push them down[129].” An interesting
case is quoted by Hooker in his Himalayan Journals, illustrating the
occurrence of a hollow shell of a tree, in which the outer portions of a
stem had been left while the inner portions had disappeared, the
wood being hollow and so favourable to the production of a current
of air which accelerated the destruction of the internal tissues.
On the coast near Burntisland on the Firth of Forth blocks of rock
are met with in which numerous plant fragments of Carboniferous
age are scattered in a confused mass through a calcareous volcanic
matrix. The twigs, leaves, spores, and other portions are in small
fragments, and their delicate cells are often preserved in wonderful
perfection.
CONDITIONS OF PRESERVATION.
The manner of occurrence of plants in sandstones, shales or other

rocks is often of considerable importance to the botanist and
geologist, as an aid to the correct interpretation of the actual
conditions which obtained at the time when the plant remains were
accumulating in beds of sediment. To attempt to restore the
conditions under which any set of plants became preserved, we
have to carefully consider each special case. A nest of seeds
preserved as internal casts in a mass of sandstone, such as is
represented by the block of Carboniferous sandstone in fig. 19,
suggests a quiet spot in an eddy where seeds were deposited in the
sandy sediment. Delicate leaf structures with sporangia still intact,
point to quietly flowing water and a transport of no great distance.
Occasionally the large number of delicate and light plant fragments,
associated it may be with insect wings, may favour the idea of a wind
storm which swept along the lighter pieces from a forest-clad slope
and deposited them in the water of a lake. In some Tertiary plant-
beds the manner of occurrence of leaves and flowers is such as to
suggest a seasonal alternation, and the different layers of plant
débris may be correlated with definite seasons of growth[130].
Fig. 19. Piece of Coal-Measures Sandstone with casts of Trigonocarpon
seeds, from Peel Quarry near Wigan. From a specimen in the
Manchester Museum, Owens College. ½ nat. size.
The predominance of certain classes of plants in a particular bed
may be due to purely mechanical causes and to differential sorting
by water, or it may be that the district traversed by the stream which
carried down the fragments was occupied almost exclusively by one
set of plants. The trees from higher ground may be deposited in a
different part of a river’s course to those growing in the plains or
lowland marshes. It is obviously impossible to lay down any definite
rules as to the reading of plant records, as aids to the elucidation of
past physical and botanical conditions. Each case must be
separately considered, and the various probabilities taken into
account, judging by reference to the analogy of present day
conditions.
Various attempts, more or less successful, have been made to
imitate the natural processes of plant mineralisation[131]. By soaking
sections of wood for some time in different solutions, and then
exposing them to heat, the organic substance of the cell walls has
been replaced by a deposit of oxide of iron and other substances.
Fern leaves heated to redness between pieces of shale have been
reduced to a condition very similar to that of fossil fronds. Pieces of
wood left for centuries in disused mines have been found in a state
closely resembling lignite[132]. Attempts have also been made to
reproduce the conditions under which vegetable tissues were
converted into coal, but as yet these have not yielded results of
much scientific value. The Geysers of Yellowstone Park have thrown
some light on the manner in which wood may be petrified by the
percolation of siliceous solutions; and it has been suggested that the
silicification of plants may have been effected by the waters of hot
springs holding silica in solution. Examples of wood in process of
petrifaction in the Geyser district of North America have been
recorded by Kuntze[133], and discussed by Schweinfurth[134], Solms-
Laubach[135] and others[136]. The latter expresses the opinion that by a
long continuance of such action as may now be observed in the
neighbourhood of hot springs, the organic substance of wood might
be replaced by siliceous material. The exact manner of replacement
needs more thorough investigation. Kuntze describes the
appearance of forest trees which have been reached by the waters
of neighbouring Geysers. The siliceous solution rises in the wood by
capillarity; the leaves, branches and bark are gradually lost, and the
outer tissues of the wood become hardened and petrified as the
result of evaporation from the exposed surface of the stem. The
products of decay going on in the plant tissues must be taken into
account, and the double decomposition which might result. There is
no apparent reason why experiments undertaken with pieces of
recent wood exposed to permeation by various calcareous and
siliceous solutions under different conditions should not furnish
useful results.
CHAPTER V.
DIFFICULTIES AND SOURCES OF ERROR IN THE DETERMINATION OF FOSSIL
PLANTS.
“Robinson Crusoe did not feel bound to conclude, from the single human footprint
which he saw in the sand, that the maker of the impression had only one leg.”
Huxley’s Hume, p. 105, 1879.
The student of palaeobotany has perhaps to face more than his

due share of difficulties and fruitful sources of error; but on the other
hand there is the compensating advantage that trustworthy
conclusions arrived at possess a special value. While always on the
alert for rational explanations of obscure phenomena by means of
the analogy supplied by existing causes, and ready to draw from a
wide knowledge of recent botany, in the interpretation of problems
furnished by fossil plants, the palaeobotanist must be constantly
alive to the necessity for cautious statement. That there is the
greatest need of moderation and safe reasoning in dealing with the
botanical problems of past ages, will be apparent to anyone
possessing but a superficial acquaintance with fossil plant literature.
The necessity for a botanical and geological training has already
been referred to in a previous chapter.
It would serve no useful purpose, and would occupy no
inconsiderable space, to refer at length to the numerous mistakes
which have been committed by experienced writers on the subject of
fossil plants. Laymen might find in such a list of blunders a mere
comedy of errors, but the palaeobotanist must see in them serious
warnings against dogmatic conclusions or expressions of opinion on
imperfect data and insufficient evidence. The description of a
fragment of a handle of a Wedgwood teapot as a curious form of
Calamite[137] and similar instances of unusual determinations need
not detain us as examples of instructive errors. The late Prof.
Williamson has on more than one occasion expressed himself in no
undecided manner as to the futility of attempting to determine
specific forms among fossil plants, without the aid of internal
structure[138]; and even in the case of well-preserved petrifactions he
always refused to commit himself to definite specific diagnoses. In
his remarks in this connection, Williamson no doubt allowed himself
to express a much needed warning in too sweeping language. It is
one of the most serious drawbacks in palaeobotanical researches
that in the majority of cases the specimens of plants are both
fragmentary and without any trace of internal structure. Specimens in
which the anatomical characters have been preserved necessarily
possess far greater value from the botanist’s point of view than those
in which no such petrifaction has occurred. On the other hand,
however, it is perfectly possible with due care to obtain trustworthy
and valuable results from the examination of structureless casts and
impressions. In dealing with the less promising forms of plant fossils,
there is in the first place the danger of trusting to superficial
resemblance. Hundreds of fossil plants have been described under
the names of existing genera on the strength of a supposed
agreement in external form; but such determinations are very
frequently not only valueless but dangerously misleading. Unless the
evidence is of the best, it is a serious mistake to make use of recent
generic designations. If we consider the difficulties which would
attend an attempt to determine the leaves, fragments of stems and
other detached portions of various recent genera, we can better
appreciate the greater probability of error in the case of imperfectly
preserved fossil fragments.
EXTERNAL RESEMBLANCE.
The portions of stems represented in figures 20 and 21, exhibit a

fairly close resemblance to one another; in the absence of
microscopical sections or of the reproductive organs it would be
practically impossible to discriminate with any certainty between
fossil specimens of the plants shown in the drawings. Examples
such as these, and many others which might be cited, serve to
illustrate the possibility of confusion not merely between different
genera of the same family, but even between members of different
classes or groups. The long slender branches of the Polygonum
represented in (fig. 21) would naturally be referred to Equisetum in
the absence of the flowers (fig. 20 B), or without a careful
examination of the insignificant scaly leaves borne at the nodes. The
resemblance between Casuarina and Ephedra and the British
species of Equisetum, or such a tropical form as E. debile, speaks
for itself.
Fig. 20.
A. Restio tetraphylla Labill. (Monocotyledon).
B. Equisetum variegatum Schleich. (Vascular Cryptogam).
C. Equisetum debile Roxb. (Vascular Cryptogam)
D. Casuarina stricta Dryand. (Dicotyledon).
E. Ephedra distachya Linn. (Gymnosperm). (A–E ½ nat. size).
Fig. 21. Polygonum Equisetiforme Sibth. and Sm. A. Showing habit of
plant. ½ nat. size. The two flowers towards the apex of one branch,
drawn to a larger scale in B. C. Node with small leaf and ochrea
characteristic of Polygonaceæ. From a plant in the Cambridge Botanic
Garden.
Fig. 22. Kaulfussia æsculifolia Blume. From a specimen from Java in the
British Museum herbarium. ⅓ nat. size.
Endless examples might be quoted illustrating the absolute futility,
in many cases, of relying on external features even for the purpose
of class distinction. An acquaintance with the general habit and
appearance of only the better known members of a family, frequently
leads to serious mistakes. The specimen shown in fig. 22 is a leaf of
a tropical fern Kaulfussia, a genus now living in South-eastern Asia,
and a member of one of the most important and interesting families
of the Filicinæ, the Marrattiaceæ; its form is widely different from that
which one is accustomed to associate with fern fronds. It is unlikely
that the impression of a sterile leaf of Kaulfussia would be
recognised as a portion of a fern plant.
Similarly in another exceedingly important group of plants, the
Cycadaceæ[139], the examples usually met with in botanical gardens
are quite insufficient as standards of comparison when we are
dealing with fossil forms. Familiarity with a few commoner types
leads us to regard them as typical for the whole family. In Mesozoic
times cycadean plants were far more numerous and widely
distributed than at the present time, and to adequately study the
numerous fossil examples we need as thorough an acquaintance as
possible with the comparatively small number of surviving genera
and species. The less common and more isolated species of an
existing family may often be of far greater importance to the
palaeobotanist than the common and more typical forms. This
importance of rare and little known types will be more fully illustrated
in the chapters dealing with the Cycadaceæ and other plant groups.
Among Dicotyledons, the Natural Order Proteaceæ, at present
characteristic of South Africa and Australia, and also represented in
South America and the Pacific Islands, is of considerable interest to
the student of fossil Angiosperms. In a valuable address delivered
before the Linnean Society[140] in 1870 Bentham drew attention to the
marked ‘protean’ character of the members of this family. He laid
special stress on this particular division of the Dicotyledons in view of
certain far-reaching conclusions, which had been based on the
occurrence in different parts of Europe of fossil leaves supposed to
be those of Proteaceous genera[141]. Speaking of detached leaves,
Bentham says:—“I do not know of a single one which, in outline or
venation, is exclusively characteristic of the order, or of any one of its
genera.” Species of Grevillea, Hakea and a few other genera are
more or less familiar in plant houses, but the leaf-forms illustrated by
the commoner members of the family convey no idea of the
enormous variation which is met with not only in the family as a
whole, but in the different species of the same genus. The striking
diversity of leaf within the limits of a single genus will be dealt with
more fully in volume ii. under the head of Fossil Dicotyledons.
VENATION CHARACTERS.
There is a common source of danger in attempting to carry too far

the venation characters as tests of affinity. The parallel venation of
Monocotyledons is by no means a safe guide to follow in all cases as
a distinguishing feature of this class of plants. In addition to such
leaves as those of the Gymnosperm Cordaites and detached pinnæ
of Cycads, there are certain species of Dicotyledons which
correspond in the character of their venation to Monocotyledonous
leaves. Eryngium montanum Coult., E. Lassauxi Dcne., and other
species of this genus of Umbelliferæ agree closely with such a plant
as Pandanus or other Monocotyledons; similarly the long linear
leaves of Richea dracophylla, R. Br., one of the Ericaceæ, are
identical in form with many monocotyledonous leaves. Instances
might also be quoted of monocotyledonous leaves, such as species
of Smilax and others which Lindley included in his family of
Dictyogens which correspond closely with some types of
Dicotyledons[142]. Venation characters must be used with care even
in determining classes or groups, and with still greater reserve if
relied on as family or generic tests.
It is too frequently the case that while we are conversant with the
most detailed histological structure of a fossil plant stem, its external
form is a matter of conjecture. The conditions which have favoured
the petrifaction of plant tissues have as a rule not been favourable
for the preservation of good casts or impressions of the external
features; and, on the other hand, in the best impressions of fern
fronds or other plants, in which the finest veins are clearly marked,
there is no trace of internal structure. It is, however, frequently the
case that a knowledge of the internal structure of a particular plant
enables us to interpret certain features in a structureless cast which
could not be understood without the help of histological facts. A
particularly interesting example of anatomical knowledge affording a
key to apparently abnormal peculiarities in a specimen preserved by
incrustation, is afforded by the fructification of the genus
Sphenophyllum. Some few years ago Williamson described in detail
the structure of a fossil strobilus (i.e. cone) from the Coal-Measures,
but owing to the isolated occurrence of the specimens he was
unable to determine the plant to which the strobilus belonged. On re-
examining some strobili of Sphenophyllum, preserved by
incrustation, in the light of Williamson’s descriptions, Zeiller was able
to explain certain features in his specimens which had hitherto been
a puzzle, and he demonstrated that Williamson’s cone was that of a
Sphenophyllum. Similar examples might be quoted, but enough has
been said to emphasize the importance of dealing as far as possible
with both petrifactions and incrustations. The facts derived from a
study of a plant in one form of preservation may enable us to
interpret or to amplify the data afforded by specimens preserved in
another form.
DECORTICATED STEMS.
The fact that plants usually occur in detached fragments, and that
they have often been sorted by water, and that portions of the same
plant have been embedded in sediment considerable distances
apart, is a constant source of difficulty. Deciduous leaves, cones, or
angiospermous flowers, and other portions of a plant which become
naturally separated from the parent tree, are met with as detached
specimens, and it is comparatively seldom that we have the
necessary data for reuniting the isolated members. As the result of
the partial decay and separation of portions of the same stem or
branch, the wood and bark may be separately preserved. Darwin[143]
describes how the bark often falls from Eucalyptus trees, and hangs
in long shreds, which swing about in the wind, and give to the woods
a desolate and untidy appearance. In the passage already quoted
from the narrative of the voyage of the Challenger, illustrations are
afforded of the manner in which detached portions of plants are likely
to be preserved in a fossil state. The epidermal layer of a leaf or the
surface tissues of a twig may be detached from the underlying
tissues and separately preserved[144]. It is exceedingly common for a
stem to be partially decorticated before preservation, and the
appearance presented by a cast or impression of the surface of a
woody cylinder, and by the same stem with a part or the whole of its
cortex intact is strikingly different. The late Prof. Balfour[145] draws
attention to this source of error in his text-book of palaeobotany, and
gives figures illustrating the different appearance presented by a
branch of Araucaria imbricata Pav. when seen with its bark intact
and more or less decorticated. Specimens that are now recognised
as casts of stems from which the cortex had been more or less
completely removed before preservation, were originally described
under distinct generic names, such as Bergeria, Knorria and others.
These are now known to be imperfect examples of Sigillarian or
Lepidodendroid plants. Grand’Eury[146] quotes the bark of
Lepidodendron Veltheimianum Presl. as a fossil which has been
described under twenty-eight specific names, and placed in several
genera.
Since the microscopical examination of fossil plant-anatomy was
rendered possible, a more correct interpretation of decorticated and
incomplete specimens has been considerably facilitated. The
examination of tangential sections taken at different levels in the
cortex of such a plant as Lepidodendron brings out the distribution of
thin and thick-walled tissue. Regularly placed prominences on such
a stem as the Knorria shown in fig. 23 are due to the existence in the
original stem of spirally disposed areas of thin-walled and less
resistant tissue; as decay proceeded, the thinner cells would be the
first to disappear, and depressions would thus be formed in the
surrounding thicker walled and stronger tissue. If the stem became
embedded in mud or sand before the more resistant tissue had time
to decay, but after the removal of the thin-walled cells, the
surrounding sediment would fill up the depressions and finally, after
the complete decay of the stem, the impression on the mould or on
the cast, formed by the filling up of the space left by the stem, would
have the form of regularly disposed projections marking the position
of the more delicate tissues. The specimen represented in the figure
is an exceedingly interesting and well preserved example of a Coal-
Measure stem combining in itself representatives of what were
formerly spoken of as distinct genera.
Fig. 23. A dichotomously branched Lepidodendroid stem (Knorria
mirabilis Ren. and Zeill.). After Renault and Zeiller[147]. (¼ nat. size.) The
original specimen is in the Natural History Museum, Paris.
The surface of the fossil as seen at e affords a typical example of
the Knorria type of stem; the spirally disposed peg-like projections
are the casts of cavities formed by the decay of the delicate cells
surrounding each leaf-trace bundle on its way through the cortex of
the stem. The surface g exhibits a somewhat different appearance,
owing to the fact that we have the cast of the stem taken at a slightly
different level. The surface of the thick layer of coal at a shows very
clearly the outlines of the leaf-cushions; on the somewhat deeper
surfaces b, c and d the leaf-cushions are but faintly indicated, and
the long narrow lines on the coal at c represent the leaf-traces in the
immediate neighbourhood of the leaf-cushions.
IMPERFECT CASTS.
It is not uncommon among the older plant-bearing rocks to find a

piece of sandstone or shale of which the surface exhibits a
somewhat irregular reticulate pattern, the long and oval meshes
having the form of slightly raised bosses. The size of such a
reticulum may vary from one in which the pattern is barely visible to
the unaided eye to one with meshes more than an inch in length.
The generic name Lyginodendron[148] was proposed several years
ago (1843) for a specimen having such a pattern on its surface, but
without any clue having been found as to the meaning of the
elongated raised areas separated from one another by a narrow
groove. At a later date Williamson investigated the anatomy of some
petrified fragments of a Carboniferous plant which suggested a
possible explanation of the surface features in the structureless
specimens. The name Lyginodendron was applied to this newly
discovered plant, of which one characteristic was found to be the
occurrence of a hypodermal band of strong thick-walled tissue
arranged in the form of a network with the meshes occupied by thin-
walled parenchyma. If such a stem were undergoing gradual decay,
the more delicate tissue of the meshes would be destroyed first and
the harder framework left. A cast of such a partially decayed stem
would take the form, therefore, of projecting areas, corresponding to
the hollowed out areas of decayed tissue, and intervening
depressions corresponding to the projecting framework of the more
resistant fibrous tissue. A precisely similar arrangement of
hypodermal strengthening tissue occurs in various Palaeozoic and
other plants, and casts presenting a corresponding appearance
cannot be referred with certainty to one special genus; such casts
are of no real scientific value[149].
The old generic terms Artisia and Sternbergia illustrate another
source of error which can be avoided only by means of a knowledge
of internal structure. The former name was proposed by Sternberg
and the latter by Artis for precisely similar Carboniferous fossils,
having the form of cylindrical bodies marked by numerous transverse
annular ridges and grooves. These fossils are now known to be
casts of the large discoid pith of the genus Cordaites, an extinct type
of Palaeozoic Gymnosperms. Calamites and Tylodendron afford
other instances of plants in which the supposed surface characters
have been shown to be those of the pith-cast. The former genus is
described at length in a later chapter, but the latter may be briefly
referred to. A cast, apparently of a stem, from the Permian rocks of
Russia was figured in 1870 under the name Tylodendron; the
surface being characterised by spirally arranged lozenge-shaped
projections, described as leaf-scars. Specimens were eventually
discovered in which the supposed stem was shown to be a cast of
the large pith of a plant possessing secondary wood very like that of
the recent genus Araucaria. The projecting portions, instead of being
leaf-cushions, were found to be the casts of depressions in the inner
face of the wood where strands of vascular tissue bent outwards on
their way to the leaves. If a cast is made of the comparatively large
pith of Araucaria imbricata the features of Tylodendron are fairly
closely reproduced[150].
A dried Bracken frond lying on the ground in the Autumn presents
a very different appearance as regards the form of the ultimate
segments of the frond to that of a freshly cut leaf. In the former the
edges of the pinnules are strongly recurved, and their shape is
considerably altered. Immersed in water for some time fern fronds or
other leaves undergo maceration, and the more delicate lamina of
the leaf rots away much more rapidly than the scaffolding of veins.
Among fossil fern fronds differences in the form of the pinnules and
in the shape and extent of the lamina, to which a specific value is
assigned, are no doubt in many cases merely the expression either
of differences in the state of the leaves at the time of fossilisation or
of the different conditions under which they became embedded.
Differential decay and disorganisation of plant tissues are factors of
considerable importance with regard to the fossilisation of plants. As
Lindley[151] and later writers have suggested, the absence or
comparative scarcity of certain forms of plants from a particular fossil
flora may in some cases be due to their rapid decay and non-
preservation as fossils; it does not necessarily mean that such plants
were unrepresented in the vegetation of that period. The decayed
rhizomes of the Bracken fern often seen hanging from the roadside
banks on a heath or moorland, and consisting of flat dark coloured
bands of resistant sclerenchyma in a loose sheath of the hard
shrivelled tissue, are in striking contrast to the perfect stem. A rotting
Palm stem is gradually reduced to a loose stringy mass consisting of
vascular strands of which the connecting parenchymatous tissue has
been entirely removed. It must frequently have happened that
detached vascular bundles or strands and plates of hard
strengthening tissue have been preserved as fossils and mistaken
for complete portions of plants.
MINERAL DEPOSITS SIMULATING PLANTS.
Apart from the necessity of keeping in view the possible

differences in form due to the state of the plant fragments at the time
of preservation, and the marked contrast between the same species
preserved in different kinds of rock, there are numerous sources of
error which belong to an entirely different category. The so-called
moss-agates and the well-known dendritic markings of black oxide of
manganese, are among the better known instances of purely
inorganic structures simulating plant forms.
An interesting example of this striking similarity between a purely
mineral deposit and the external form of a plant is afforded by some
specimens originally described as impressions of the oldest known
fern. The frontispiece to a well-known work on fossil plants, Le
monde des plantes avant l’apparition de l’homme[152], represents a
fern-like fossil on the surface of a piece of Silurian slate. The
supposed plant was named Eopteris Morierei Sap., and it is
occasionally referred to as the oldest land plant in books of
comparatively recent date. In the Museum of the School of Mines,
Berlin, there are some specimens of Angers slate on some of which
the cleavage face shows a shallow longitudinal groove bearing on
either side somewhat irregularly oblong and oval appendages of
which the surface is traversed by fine vein-like markings. A careful
examination of the slate reveals the fact that these apparent fern
pinnules are merely films of iron pyrites deposited from a solution
which was introduced along the rachis-like channel. Many of the
extraordinary structures described as plants by Reinsch[153] in his
Memoir on the minute structure of coal have been shown to be of
purely mineral origin.

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Dementia, Narrative and Performance:

Staging Reality, Reimagining Identities

Folk Dance and the Creation of National Identities:

Performance and Posthumanism: Staging Prototypes of

Staging the Sacred: Performance in Late Ancient

Diagnosis and Management in Dementia: The Neuroscience

Narrative And Technology Ethics 1st Edition Wessel

ABC of dementia Second Edition Coope

Reimagining Prosperity Arash Fazli

Teaching Narrative 1st ed. Edition Richard Jacobs

ISBN 978-3-030-46546-9 ISBN 978-3-030-46547-6 (eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020

The arguments on which this book turns were germinated in the

Australian disability discussion group members, for inspiring and chal-

1 My Mother’s Story, My Story 1

Part I Dementia, Identity and Narrative 33

2 Recasting Senility: The Genesis of the ‘Right Kind’ of

Part II Dementia in Performance 91

4 Staging the ‘Reality’ of Dementia 93

5 Staging Dementia Voices in Australia: Missing the Bus to

6 Mapping Applied Performance in Dementia Cultures177

7 “I Don’t Want to Disappear”: Dementia and Public

Part III Dementia as Performance 245

8 Rehearsing a Theory of Dementia as Performance247

9 Revisiting My Mother’s Story, My Story269

ABC Australian Broadcasting Commission

TfD Theatre for Development

Fig. 6.2 ‘Elmer Anderson’s dream’. Photo by Skydiving Photos. Used

My Mother’s Story, My Story

My mother, Barbara Gibson, was diagnosed with ‘probable’ Alzheimer’s

© The Author(s) 2020 1

emerged in our time together: some between imagination and memory;

a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being

Neoliberalism is a pervasive global ideology, referring to the privileged

Focal Points, Challenges, and Contributions

theatre and performance practices I investigate here have emerged from

What I do aim to do in this book, overall, is to challenge the hegemony

been overwhelming and unmanageable. My attention to the West is driven

a prevalent performance mode that exists across diverse and emergent

their stories in ways acceptable to the normalising regimes in which they

especially in reference to conceptions of the ‘real’ and ‘reality’. My under-

Theoretical Contexts, Disciplinary Locations,

This book is situated at the intersection of theatre and performance stud-

As important as ‘personhood’ is in providing a critique of the dominant

upon, and, in some cases, challenged, under such monikers as “age-­

include comments made available on YouTube or in journalists’ inter-

Mapping the Arguments

Part III, ‘Dementia as Performance’, comprises Chaps. 8 and 9. In

Resisting the ‘Right Kind’ of Dementia Story

trauma, victimhood, crisis, and displacement—are performed. This can be

(2014): it helps assess whether a specific representation of age might admit

Balfour, M., and N. Woodrow. 2013. On stitches. In Refugee performance:

Casey, M. 2009. Ngapartji Ngapartji: Telling aboriginal Australian stories. In Get

———. 2008. Living autobiographically: How we create identity in narrative.

Hickey-Moody, A.C. 2009. Unimaginable bodies: Intellectual disability, perfor-

———. 2011. Disability culture and community performance. Basingstoke:

Accessed May 14, 2014. http://ageculturehumanities.org/WP/depth-

Reinstein, M. 2004. Travelling in and travelling out: Story-making with elderly

1 My Mother’s Story, My Story 1

Part I Dementia, Identity and Narrative 33

2 Recasting Senility: The Genesis of the ‘Right Kind’ of

Part II Dementia in Performance 91

4 Staging the ‘Reality’ of Dementia 93

5 Staging Dementia Voices in Australia: Missing the Bus to

6 Mapping Applied Performance in Dementia Cultures177

7 “I Don’t Want to Disappear”: Dementia and Public

Part III Dementia as Performance 245

8 Rehearsing a Theory of Dementia as Performance247

9 Revisiting My Mother’s Story, My Story269

upon, and, in some cases, challenged, under such monikers as “age-