Abstract/Summary

Term/Time/A Revolutionary Lexicon for Mother-Demics was first performed as part of the ResearchWorks Series at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, England, on Monday, February 24, 2025. In this written publication following the performance, we begin with a note on the fonts readers will encounter herein. Taking a cue from the typographical polyvocality of mothering in Jackie Kay’s The Adoption Papers (1998), the performers, Dr. Laura Bissell and Dr. Lucy Tyler, express themselves in three typefaces. Lucy’s typeface (and her speech acts in performance) is a font often used in children’s literature: Gill Sans. Laura’s typeface is Grotesque, acknowledging the historical connotations of this term with birthing bodies. A third typeface, Segoe UI, is used to demonstrate the mother-demics’ collective speech. Segoe UI is the typeface of the web and desktop app Microsoft Teams, the forum for the mother-demics’ communications. Herein, we appropriate Segoe UI as a speculative organizing typography of mother-demics. We begin the performance now.