The Little Girl Inside Me

Little Girl Inside Me

Written and directed by Marie Yagami. This piece is a physical theatre performance which explores, via choreographed movement, voiceover, video-mapping, music and lighting, the themes of healing and transformation from past trauma.

The piece has a positive outlook and an authentic touch and the performance will last for approximately 50 minutes.

A young woman has had traumatic experience - aged 10 - of an earthquake inside a train 20 years ago in rural Japan. She has been diagnosed, as an adult, with PSTD. She is stuck, on-stage, in a large moveable cage, which separates her both from herself and from the outside world. She distracts herself by perpetually dissociating, and by running away from her reality. Then, she meets a child who she slowly comes to realise is a younger version of herself.

By entering gently into a movement/dialogue with this child the young woman begins to see her past more clearly. She begins to accept who she has become, who she was and to also slowly see who she might yet still become?

As the performance develops the young woman finds a way, eventually, out of her cage and she begins to be able to reconnect with both the young child, with the other people in her world, and eventually…with herself!

We use both dance, voice, music and video mapping in order to visualise the psychological state of the woman. This performance consists of 1 female dancer who is stuck inside a large distorted cage, 6 dancers to represent a broad and diverse community and society at large, and the little girl who is the female dancer’s inner child.