Is this Home?
This short solo performance (17 mins) explores concepts and behaviours connected to home and ideas of home, with a particular focus on memory and geographies of belonging.
This performance began with a heart. It began with encountering the heart in the opening monologue of Yo tambien habla de la Rosa ( I, Too Speak of the Rose) written in 1965 by Mexican playwright Emilio Carballido, an English translation of which I came across in Diana Taylor’s The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas.
‘I listened to my heart beat all afternoon. I finished my tasks early, so I sat here, quietly, looking out with blurry eyes, listening to my heart as it beat gently against my breasts, like a cautious lover knocking to come in, or a chick pecking at the walls of its egg, trying to move out into the light. I began to imagine my heart…a sea anemone, intricate, delicately coloured, tucked away in its cave, an efficient highly methodical organism devoted to the task of regulating endless distances of crepuscular canals, some wide enough for royal gondolas, others barely wide enough for rowing vegetables and food to market by the slow stroke of the oars, all of them pulsing regularly in order’ (Carballido in Taylor, 2003, 80-81)
Through these opening lines, I was captured, enthralled and transported to a doorstep in Mexico City, a place that for me is both real and imaginary. It is imaginary in the sense that I have never been there, but also in the sense that all places are imaginary in what we think, see or hear about them. I felt a strong urge to speak these words aloud in a space where I believed I could best speak them, in the theatre. But to what end?
These beautifully evocative lines may have been the impetus to perform or for performance, but in order to investigate a research question through performance, it is vital that the research question sets the frame, context and structure; yet the question evolves and mutates as the research and the art intertwine and rewrite each other over time. The question began by asking how do theatre artists create and/or challenge meanings of home in Galway, Gaza and Mexico city. This is inevitably followed by a series of questions, how do I as a theatre artist in Galway take this on in my research-led practice? This appeared a mammoth task so began the journey with another question: What facilitates an audience to think of, imagine, remember, feel or sense home? To answer this I had to start with myself.
Although this is a solo performance it came about as a result of connections with artists in Gaza, Mexico and Galway and with my family and my home. It was filmed by Micheal O’ Halloran in the O’ Donoghue Theatre at the University of Galway in October 2020.
‘‘If you pour everything into the tiny vessel of a song and wear out your heart, what is that? Is that small or big? If you choose to put yourself out there on a small stage, singing for the small somebody inside of you, knowing how quickly songs wane, is that modest or gargantuan?”
Kyo Maclear, Birds Art Life: A Year of Observation (Penguin, 2018), p.53
Mi Cuerpo Mi Casa/My Body My House
This is a collaborative digital performance devised by Astrid Hadad, theatre artist, Mexico City, Tanya Gomez, theatre artist, Mexico City and I. The performance formed part of my practice as research and investigates the theme of home in relation to the body and to the female body in particular. The three of us met over zoom for about an hour every week for seven weeks, we sang, talked, laughed, translated, and told stories to each other. It was an unforgetable experience and depsite being physically removed from each other the generosity of these two artists, their sincerity and warmth came through the screen. The collages for the performance were designed by artist Valentin Colin. The performance looks at motherhood, family, land, identity and belonging exploring issues such as femicide and the idea of 'no return'. I will be eternally grateful for the gift of meeting and working with these artists and also for learning of the work of Alejandra Edwards and her exhibition No return which features in the piece and is based on the impact of femicide on families in Mexico. The performance is dedicated to the memory of Diana Velaquez Florencio, a victim of femicide.
The performance is presented online in English and Spanish and is approximately 30 mins in duration.
Making Home
Making Home is a film of a short street performance which occured in Galway City in March 2022 by Emilija Jefremova.The piece sees me making six makeshift clotheslines using objects of memory over six different locations in the city centre on a busy sunny Saturday. The piece occured close to the onset of the war in Ukraine, as the European Migrant crisis worsens, and as our housing crisis in Ireland becomes a matter of national urgency. Thus the idea of making a home wherever you can, and the idea of belonging, and the effort of carrying 'home' with you, either when forcibly displaced or travelling is pertinent to this piece. Thank you to Robert Mcfeely and to my children and to Emilija Jefremova.
Estamos Aqui- We are here is a performance on el Zocalo, the main square of Mexico City, (CDMX) performed by Tanya Gomez and I on a Saturday lunchtime in January 2023, in response to this important site of culture, history, memory, political action and agency. This performance celebrates the legacy of female art and performance in public space in Mexico, and explores ideas of becoming, connection and home. We began with placing our bare feet on the ground, and followed a simple physical movement in response to the site, each other and our feelings of place. Ale Edwards and Aine Tivnan took photographs and this video is by Aine Tivnan.