Anne Enright with Vicky Featherstone: Mothers and Daughters (2020 Event)

‘You were always sitting in character, you were just never sure
which one.’ So says Norah to the memory of her mother in Actress,
the new novel by Anne Enright. The mother in question is
Katherine O’Dell, who died aged 58 – the same age Norah has now
reached.


Actress is a portrait of life in the theatre, of one woman’s rise
to fame and her subsequent decline, with all the challenges that
women on stage faced in the years before the #MeToo movement
shone light on them. But this novel is also a tender examination
of the relationship between mother and daughter – the
reconstruction of an emotional landscape in which fame has left a
trail of newspaper articles, photographs and public performances.


For this event, recorded live at the 2020 Book Festival, the
Booker Prize-winning novelist is joined by Vicky
Featherstone, Artistic Director of the Royal Court
Theatre and the first Artistic Director of the National Theatre
of Scotland, to discuss this sensitive portrayal of a life lived
in the spotlight.