Martha McDonald is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Philadelphia. Her performances and installations feature handcrafted costumes and objects that she activates through gestures of making and unmaking and singing to transmit narrative. McDonald's practice often focuses on site-specific “interventions” in historic house museums, libraries, and gardens that investigate the sites and their stories to explore how these public places connect with personal histories and emotional states.
At MacDowell in 2003, she worked on development of "Anadne's Thread", a new performance piece exploring the myths of Anadne and Penelope through song, video and personal narrative to look at contemporary themes of loneliness and exile. The piece was commissioned by the Prince Music Theatre in Philadelphia and will premiere there in spring 2004.
McDonald's then most recent solo performance, "Girls on the Rocks: A Mermaids Tale", was shown at theatre of yugen in San Francisco in November 2002 and was featured in American Living Room Festival at "Here" Center for the Arts in NYC in August 2003
