Climbing twisted ladders: Using DNA in performance storytelling

Family histories are changing. An increased understanding of the science of DNA can challenge or affirm a sense of identity. Performances such as La Messe Basse’s Siri use the science of DNA to ask questions about what it means to be human. DNA is often a tool providing answers that fail to totally satisfy. This paper will reflect on the way storytelling performances, including my doctoral practice-as-research piece - Lines And Ladders - can provide a method to explore DNA as a way of knowing. Lines And Ladders is a micro-audience performance that takes place in public. Audience-participants are invited to share stories of their family history and what it means to them whilst playing a board game. The roll of the dice governs the stories that are shared. In the performance sometimes there is repetition, spaces are repeatedly visited and stories develop, other spaces are missed completely. This is artistic research and the method is play, yet the imagery offered by science is central to the game. The double helix is used across the board as a ladder to be climbed or descended. This artistic decision places science at the centre of the audience experience in contrast to the performance method of research, which places the emphasis on the liveness of the storytelling moment. The prompt that ‘you take a DNA test’ appears on the board twice. Near the start it will move you ahead, near the end it will send you backwards. These moments offer a chance to talk about the possibilities and limitations of DNA testing for family historians. Players have often expressed wariness and a little scepticism about its use - an attitude that may be affected by my own as performance maker.
 
Kirsty is a White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities funded practice-as-research postgraduate researcher at the University of Sheffield. Lines And Ladders is the culmination of her doctoral research project. She has exhibited and presented the work at TAPRA (2017 and 2018), Royal Holloway University London and the Universities of Kent, York, Leeds and the Memory Studies Association at the University of Copenhagen. In 2017, Kirsty came second in the TaPRA Postgraduate Essay Competition. She has been lead organiser of the White Rose Practice-as-Research Postgraduate Network (PaRNet) connecting postgraduates researching through creative practice across Yorkshire.