The Daughters Project Responding to global #genderviolence

Tammy Brennan is a writer and performance artist who creates music theatre work about the lived experience of gender violence and sexual trauma. You can see some of her previous work on vimeo.

The Daughters Opera is a piece of collaborative contemporary music theatre about gender violence in the 21st century. It is currently being produced by Sydney-based performance artist Tammy Brennan, between Australia and India. A powerful monodrama that spans a massive emotional terrain, the audience enter a mythic realm engulfed by fear, condemnation, sacrifice and ritual directed by acclaimed Indian theatre artist Anuradha Kapur.

In her direction Anuradha Kapur invites the audience to consider what is at the heart of gender violence; violence as it seeps into the everyday, into the ordinary. How some events become catalysts that provoke us to think and see anew the fabric of life and how we might represent it. She writes:

I want to be attentive to how we may present a woman on stage; put simply – she should be represented neither as victim nor valorized into a sign of feminine power. But she has to be placed somewhere in between these two polarities; connected to the everyday, the ordinary; neither totally ordinary not totally extraordinary.

The Daughter’s Project Research ‘Zine comprises a series of articles and shocking statistics and real stories which assisted Tammy in writing the libretto (lyrics) of her opera performance for this project. This zine is first in a series of prints which will explore the issues further in depth.

Here’s a link to an interview with Tammy while she was in India doing research for the zine.

Getting the lithographic plate made up for printing on the Big Fag Press (via Computer to Plate Technology)

The ink on the ‘printing blanket’ which transfers the design from the plate to the paper.

Printing The Daughter’s Project Research ‘Zine on the Big Fag Press – inked up lithographic plate in the foreground, printed zine on the paper bed in the background.

The Big Fag Press sponsored this print with many hours of in-kind work, because of the global importance of recognising that the education and empowerment of women greatly improves its society. The 8 page zine folds out into a poster.

The Daughter’s Project is funded by Australia Council for the Arts and the many supporters of Tammy’s work on her Pozible Campaign who will receive this limited edition ‘zine to thank them for their contribution.

A big shout out and thank you to the awesome Rob at Farrell Printer’s for cropping the zines with so much care!

A second edition of the zine may be printed in the future for those wishing to purchase it. If you would like to put yourself on the waiting list, please email louise@bigfagpress.org