Lucia’s Chapters of Coming Forth by Day

Obie award-winner and Tony nominee Maria Tucci stars as Lucia Joyce, the adored daughter of James Joyce, played by Tony nominee Paul Kandel, in a theatrical ode to her life – and afterlife – created by legendary New York theatre ensemble Mabou Mines. As a young woman in Paris, the world of Lucia Joyce was filled with writers, artists and intellectuals. She was a dancer, a painter and, her father believed, the true inheritor of his genius. But while still in her twenties, her behaviour grew erratic. Admitted to a mental hospital, Lucia spent the next 48 years in confinement until her death in 1982.

With richly textured visuals and an evocative score, Lucia’s Chapters of Coming Forth by Day traverses Lucia’s institutional life, her father’s celebrity, her struggle with mental illness, and the playful dream language of Finnegans Wake, to cast clarity and insight into an otherwise tragic and mysterious life. The artistic team for this multi-layered production includes Emmy award-winning film composer Carter Burwell (The Twilight Saga, Fargo, Being John Malkovich, True Grit), projections by Obie award winner Julie Archer and set design by Jim Clayburgh, a founding member of the Wooster Group.

'They are like nothing else I’ve ever seen in theatre, I can’t wait, I can’t wait to see them!’ Ali Smith

Guest Director Ali Smith on Mabou Mines:
'They are so inventive, so vivid and vital as an ensemble. The last show I saw by them, they turned the theatre round, so as you watched the stage, it turned into the theatre and was full of people watching you back, it just was a moment, they did it like that (clicks). They are extraordinary, they are like nothing else I’ve ever seen in theatre, I can’t wait, I can’t wait to see them!’