Mollspeak

About

Written and directed by Maria Fusco, Mollspeak takes two forms; onsite as an eleven-channel sound installation located as a semi-permanent feature of the Undercroft chamber inside London’s Museum of the Home, and online as a broadcast 24-minute long sound piece.

The piece is experimental in form as it explores and embodies working-class voices, specifically of eighteen-century servants in England. The work’s title, Mollspeak, is taken from a phrase used by employers to denigrate or belittle their servants’ way of speaking. Its negative connotation is subverted by headlining a work that addresses the importance of working-class narratives. 

Fusco’s original script is informed, in part, by eighteenth-century ballads, high court testimony, and archival research; departing from normative history telling by mashing genres to challenge hackneyed and less visible representations of the working-class. The script’s audio is both percussive and incandescent due to it being written in anapestic tetrameter, which was a period meter traditionally used in comic verse of that period. Fusco’s written script meanwhile captures authentic lived experiences of the time and is voiced by actor Maxine Peake, recorded during the first lockdown of 2020.

Read more at mariafusco.net/events/mollspeak