Upstairs, In Our Bedroom

In front of a white wall, Same As Sister, biracial black and white twin sisters, mirror one another's hair fixing gestures. The sister in the background is dressed in black, with the sister in the foreground wearing a brown afro wig and red sweater. — Same As Sister in rehearsal for *Upstairs, In Our Bedroom* at Dance Arts Institute, October 2023.
Photo: © Gillian Mapp

Revealing the powerful and painful intersections between twinship, blackness, madness, and art-making, Upstairs, In Our Bedroom (work-in-progress) is a multimedia dance performance that radically reimagines Same As Sister’s dual autobiography next to the true story of the Caribbean-British outsider artists, June and Jennifer Gibbons (a.k.a. ‘The Silent Twins’).

Co-Direction and Choreography Same As Sister (Hilary Brown-Istrefi and Briana Brown-Tipley)

Performance Same As Sister with Peggy Piacenza and John Pickup featuring James Edward Becton III, Emma Rose Brown, Sabrina Canas and Abigail Linnemeyer

Dramaturgy Susan Mar Landau

Sound Design Arjuna Meadows

Puppetry Consultant Hanne Tierney

Disability Arts Advisor Rachel da Silveira Gorman

VR Specialist Lora Appel

Upstairs, In Our Bedroom is being developed through the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP), NYC, with additional support from Dancemakers, Toronto. The project was developed, in part, through IRT Theater’s Archive Collective Development Series and a 2022-2023 Plug-N-Play Residency at Toronto Dance Theatre.