Fowls and Fishes

I’m recently returned from Connemara where I spent the week with Maria Tivnan and a group of artists- performers and theatre makers. I was leading a week of work in Transformation and Imaginative improvisation, forming part of an Arts and Ecology R&D bursary awarded to Maria.

The residency took place at Interface- Inagh – It’s a fascinating place and if you don’t know it you can click here to read more about it! It’s otherworldliness is about more than simply its remoteness. There are lab areas that have restricted access-and we know how tantalising it is to know what is going on behind restricted access doors. There was also plenty of accessible space both out doors and in amongst the disused structures that make up the former salmon fisheries plant. We were principally based in a massive shed called the hatching room however we spilled out regularly over the days to inhabit the art studio, the corridors and outside spaces which border Derryclare Lough. Although it brought to mind places like 101 Outdoor Arts in Greenham Common, UK, and even shooting WWZ, with the laboratory set up in the main building, I’ve never worked in a place quite like it.

We stayed in the nearby village of Letterfrack nestled at the foot of Diamond Hill - the mountain making for an impressive morning view. To be able to live and work with a group of artists I’d not met before, was a lovely, intimate and rare experience. Down the road was the Industrial school. On our final day together, with human scenarios emerging, Raph worked with images of cows (his animal) being taken forcibly away from their herd. He explored this in an arena type space - one of the disused massive open topped tanks.

Jojo working in fox, took us up into a building she’d discovered at the far end of the site and peering over the edge we could just make out the skeleton of a fox or perhaps a pine martin in the ground below. This was an image that later influenced text choice which we layered over the physical language of the fox.

Back in Dublin I caught the second night of The Conference of Birds directed and conceived by Andrea Scott at the Mill theatre, Dundrum. Reverberations from the land where I’d been based all the week were still coursing through me. I’d worked with the Elders - cast members of the show during the latter stages of their rehearsals. Each one of them was working in a specific bird. The show, cleverly named ‘COB 2’, tells ‘stories of birds from Ireland’s Red List of Birds of Conservation Concern. You can listen to A review of the show on RTÉ on the Mooney Goes Wild show- Mon 18th May. The show had a poignancy and acute relevance and each bird let us know something of the habitat it required for survival. The woodland surrounding Interface at Inagh came back to mind. The hatchery building there sits surrounded by Sitka Spruce forest. This is a monocultural, non- native coniferous forest and birds like the Curlew and others facing extinction in Ireland cannot make this sort of habitat their home. Interface are gradually restoring the land around them to native woodland.

Thanks to Maria Tivnan for bringing me on board for this Research and Development project, to the performers and artists involved, Daniel, Raphael, Jojo as well as Emma and Allanah at Interface who made us so welcome. I’m sure we will be back.