The Folding Wife integrates rhythmic poetic text with the unique visual language of Manila-based Anino Shadowplay Collective.

Three generations of women shared a goal: to leave the poverty and uncertainty of their homeland for the promises of the First World. Grace, a young Filipina woman, is laying her family to rest, packing them up in little boxes. Alone, equipped with only anecdotes, she breathes life into the two women of her family who have led her to the Australian landscape. There is Clara, the grand matriarch who remembers the opulent Philippines of the Spanish era, who finds comfort in an impeccable breeding. Her daughter Dolores is a disappointment, having given birth to Grace after a scandalous affair.

The Folding Wife is an evocative new theatre collaboration between Australian and Filipino artists, exploring shifting nationalisms and what propels people to scatter across the face of the Earth in search of a new, imagined home.

Writer Paschal Daantos Berry creates a series of narrative fragments drawing on the selected memories of Grace. In the folds and creases of her possessions, in the images and anecdotes about Clara and Dolores, she is able to unravel her own identity.

The Folding Wife (8 min excerpt) from Anino on Vimeo.