ANATOMY OF A SUICIDE
Bonnie is haunted by the traumas of her family. Generations of oppressed ghosts seem caught in the walls of the house that she has inherited.
Anna, Bonnie’s mother, thirty years earlier, is cursed by painful memories of her youth and a paralytic fear of the future. She finds poisoned comfort in her addictions and grasps on to the small, tangible beauties of her life.
Carol, Anna’s mother and Bonnie’s grandmother, struggles with the conservative environment of upper-middle class England that she has been born into in the 20th century. In her last attempt to squash her lurking desire to die, she chooses the only life that she is offered: that of a mother and a housewife.
Three women in three generations living at three different times form one family. Their lives unfold on stage at the same time. The lives of mothers and daughters meet and intersect as ghosts in their family home. They echo and rhyme as they grow up side by side, fall in love, bear children, bear children and inevitably die.
How do you recover from a trauma that isn’t yours? How do you free yourself from inherited patterns and tendencies? How do you find connection and tenderness in all the self-oppressed suffering that we call “family”? How do you create your own story for yourself when you seem doomed to suffer chronically and die like the generations before you?
This production of ANATOMY OF A SUICIDE is the first translation and production in the Dutch language.
Premièred on the 9th of January 2025 at Frascati Theatre in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
CONCEPT, DIRECTION, LIGHTING DESIGN, MUSIC AND SOUND DESIGN Erasmus Mackenna
TEXT Alice Birch
PERFORMANCE Maartje Braakman, Julia Diepstraten, Marit Hooijschuur, Folashade Ilemobade, Sabine van Kuipers, Roel Pronk, Bauke van Boheemen,
Romy Vreden and Jurjen Zeelen
SCENOGRAPHY Kevin Pieterse
COSTUME DESIGN Daphne de Winkel
TRANSLATION AND DRAMATURGY Roel Pronk
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR Julija Filipovic
DRAMATURGICAL SUPPORT Belle de Wit
PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT Tosca Schutte
TECHNICAL PRODUCTION AND OPERATION Wouter Versteege
TECHNICAL OPERATION Jamie Barson
INTIMACY COORDINATION Zarah Bracht
SCENIC PHOTOGRAPHY Bart Grietens
PRODUCED BY Frascati Productions