esea contemporary is pleased to present 'Auntie Tales: Ghost Stories Across the Generations', an engaging and playful workshop led by theatre-maker and artist Trà Nguyễn. Part of our esea ArtClub programme, the event invites Manchester locals to explore how kinship and storytelling intersect on stage, centring on the figure of ‘the auntie’ — whether you are one yourself, or simply have an auntie in your life.
Participants will begin by sharing ‘horror stories’: uncanny or unsettling tales featuring female figures, passed down through families or lived first-hand. Together, the group will reflect on what these stories reveal about relationships, culture, and the roles women play in our imaginations.
From there, Nguyễn will guide participants through a creative writing exercise, using prompts drawn from the shared tales. No theatre experience is necessary — only curiosity, imagination, and a willingness to exchange stories! As the session unfolds, these individual contributions will form a collective tapestry of kinship and folklore, illustrating how everyday narratives can transform into shared performance.
Join us for an afternoon of storytelling, laughter, and creativity, where aunties take centre stage and familiar figures become doorways to the unexpected.
Booking is required – reserve your spot and bring a story to tell!
Trà Nguyễn is a theatre-maker working across text, movement, and space. Her practice bridges contemporary performance, experimental writing, and embodied research into memory, language, and diasporic kinship. A Fulbright scholar with an MFA in Dramatic Writing from Carnegie Mellon, Trà founded The Run — A Theater Project, which builds experimental theatre infrastructure in Vietnam through production, training, and critical discourse. She is also developing Verbatim Bodies, a methodology that frames theatre as a space for attention, translating gesture, breath, and slow-time repetition into materials and modes of perception. Her recent work Mother Doesn’t Know Mnemosyne premiered at Forecast Festival, Berlin (March 2025), and at the Djakarta International Theater Platform (August 2025).