Mummy Brown

Narrator: 

This scenery is for Mummy Brown, a play by the Susie Wang theatre group. The scenery, which is an installation in its own right, re-creates an old-fashioned museum. Many surfaces are covered in fake marble, painted using white, green and a paint colour called ‘mummy brown’. 

The paint colour ‘mummy brown’ was traditionally made by grinding up skin from Egyptian mummies. Nowadays it’s forbidden to make paint from dead people, but the colour lives on in old paintings and, as here, in imitation marble. 

The plot of the play Mummy Brown is acted out in this small space – a museum standing within a large museum. Everything seems to be quite ordinary, but then strange things start to happen.  

A Danish museum guard encourages the people in the room to touch the objects on display, but she asks the visitors to watch out for the big hole in the centre of the floor. It’s very deep, she says. 

One woman has her period and leaves a bloody mark on a white marble bench. The museum guard can’t manage to wash the mark away.  

Men come and go. A pregnant woman looks for the father of her child. She is startled when she sees the mark on the bench. “I can’t handle blood!” she says, and screams. 

Mummy Brown is the second part of Susie Wang’s horror trilogy about human nature. The play will be performed here several times during the exhibition. Check the programme of events for more information. And while you’re waiting for the real thing, you can take a seat and watch your own imaginary performance…