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 complex intersections between twinship, blackness, mental illness, and art-making, Upstairs, In Our Bedroom (work-in-progress) is a multimedia dance performance that radically reimagines Same As Sister’s joint autobiography alongside that of the Barbadian-British outsider artists June-Alison and Jennifer Gibbons (‘The Silent Twins’).

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

Performance Same As Sister with Kiebpoli Calnek, Sabrina Canas, Abigail Linnemeyer, Peggy Piacenza, John Pickup and Asia Stewart

Dramaturgy Susan Mar Landau

Sound Design Arjuna Meadows

A/V Design and Programming Jeremy Kadetsky

Disability Arts Advisor Rachel da Silveira Gorman

Stage Management Shana Crawford

Upstairs, In Our Bedroom (work-in-progress) was developed, in part, by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant and through support from Dancemakers, Toronto; the 2023-25 HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP) in partnership with IRT Theater’s Archive Collective Development Series, NYC; and a 2023 Plug-N-Play Residency at Toronto Dance Theatre.