Dead on Her Feet

Emmy award winning playwright Ron Hutchinson collaborates with RSC Honorary Associate Director Barry Kyle for this first production from The North Wall Arts Centre, Oxford. An electric and powerful physical work on the Recession, it considers the extraordinary phenomena of 1930’s dance marathons; human endurance contests where couples were driven to breaking point dancing non-stop for weeks, competing for money.

Arising from fads for human endurance of the hedonistic 1920’s, the marathon dances of the following decade mirrored the desperation endured under the Great Depression. Dead On Her Feet finds a parallel in the present day, with six young people desperate for fame, fortune, and the next week’s rent dancing the night away against the backdrop of a world in financial freefall, watched by a ravenous audience, an out-of-town promoter, and a stranger with a past he’s trying to hide.