Birdie Danse Macabre

To conclude a three month residency with the Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s international programme for visual and applied arts (IASPIS) Post Workers Theatre presented their practice and current project ‘The Birdie Dance Macabre’ as a live performance lecture in three acts, followed by a conversation with Magnus Ericson.

The design troupe shared their research into Workers Theatre in Sweden, and positioned their enquiry into the “frankenchicken” as a symbol of the human and environmental cost of cheap chicken in The Capitalocene today.

In the first act, PWT discussed recent research into the Swedish workers theatre movement and wider political folk music history reflecting on how this relates to their practice of updating historic forms of creative resistance. The second act delivered a performative reading of worker testimony from the Big Poultry industry alongside a discussion of PWT’s translation of verbatim theatre techniques. The final third act, concluded the lecture performance with an interpretation of The Tweets 1981 viral ‘Birdie Song’ framing it as a participatory narrative device, and reimagining both the song and the dance to address the lived experience of unseen workers within industrial scale food production and delivery.

Following the performance, a conversation chaired by Magnus Ericson, unpacked Post Workers Theatre’s history and methods in relation to design, and a socially / politically engaged practice.