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

Upstairs, In Our Bedroom (work-in-progress) is an autobiographical performance that radically reimagines Same As Sister’s experiences as female identical twins of color next to those of outsider authors, June and Jennifer Gibbons (a.k.a. The Silent Twins). Utilizing dance, text, VR technology, and puppetry, they will reveal the powerful and painful intersections between twinship, blackness, madness, and art-making.

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

Performance Same As Sister with Peggy Piacenza and John Pickup

Video Performance James Edward Becton III and Emma Rose Brown

Understudy Sabrina Canas

Dramaturgy Susan Mar Landau

Sound Design Arjuna Meadows

Puppetry Consultant Hanne Tierney

VR Specialist Lora Appel

Disability Arts Advisor Rachel da Silveira Gorman

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.