A performative journey which takes you to the Irish bog landscape through scent. Distillation is a response to the recent cessation of the peat harvesting industry in Ireland. Over the past year, Luke Casserly has collaborated with renowned perfume maker Joan Woods to create a unique distillation of the Midlands bog - the place where he grew up - as the starting point for an olfactory encounter which looks at our human relationship to place. Dedicated to the future of our broken landscapes – in the hope that by listening to them, we might be able to better understand them.
Part interactive lecture, part performance, Distillation features original text, video, sound design, and sculpture. The audience are seated around a large custom-made table and are gently invited to hold organic materials and smell parts of the landscape as part of the experience. The perfume featured as part of the project was designed by Joan Woods, who collected and distilled botanicals from the Irish Midlands as part of the creative process. Each audience member is gifted a small sample of the custom-made perfume as part of the performance.
The project premiered as part of Dublin Theatre Festival 2023. A co-production by Abbey Theatre & Solas Nua. Commissioned by Solas Nua, with support from Goethe-Institut Irland.
CREDITS
Creator: Luke Casserly
Perfume: Joan Woods
Sculpture: Ger Clancy
Dramaturgy: Rex Daugherty
Costume: Doreen McKenna
Additional Costume: Síofra Caherty
Video: Robert Higgins
Sound: Sam Hardiman
Stage Management: Lora Hartin
Artistic Documentation: Fergal Styles
Production Photography: Patricio Cassinoni
A mountain, a coastline, a forest, a bog, and a port.
The project invited a virtual audience to take a moment and listen to the passing of time in these five unique Irish landscapes from anywhere in the world at any time of day. Each distinct sound recording was captured from a different geographical site in Ireland, and was accompanied by a portrait of the exact location where the recording took place. This collection of sounds formed a landscape catalogue which could be listened to either in close succession, or at different times throughout the day.
Part travelogue, part sharing, this was a quiet meditation which invited an audience to listen to a place, and imagine what it might have to say back to us. The project was dedicated to the future of our broken landscapes – in the hope that by listening to them, we might be able to better understand them.
The project was commissioned by the Department of Foreign Affairs in December 2021 as part of the To Be Irish campaign.
The landscapes featured as part of the project include:
A Bog. Recorded just outside of Lanesboro, Co. Longford.
A Port. Recorded on the Marina in Cork city centre.
A Forest. Recorded in Barna Woods, Co. Galway.
A Coastline. Recorded at Seapoint, Co. Dublin
A Moutain. Recorded on Black Mountain, Co. Antrim.
CREDITS:
Creator: Luke Casserly
Sound Design and Photography: Nicola Kenny Doyle
Website Design: Thomas Wakely
2021
Samuel Beckett Theatre
There was once a time when a red squirrel could have travelled from the north to the south of Ireland through tree-travel alone. That native forest of 80% has been uprooted over time to leave Ireland with the lowest tree cover in Europe at just 11%
Where has the forest gone? What would its ghost say to us?
At the intersection of ecology and performance, Root was a performative inquiry which examined the importance of trees in our ecosystem - from the point of view of a tree. As part of the project, a new micro-forest of 1,000 native trees was planted in the Irish Midlands in April 2021.
CREDITS:
Co-created, Devised & Performed by: Shanna May Breen & Luke Casserly
Devised & Performed by: Wayne Jordan & Fiona Breen
Sound Design: Brendan Farrell
Lighting Design: Matt McGowan
Costume Design: Witt Tarantino
Dramaturgical Support: Wayne Jordan
Executive Producer: Science Gallery Dublin
Associate Producer: Hillary Dziminski
Production & Stage Management by: Grace Donnery
Chief LX: Síofra Nic Liam
Assistant Stage Manager: Gráinne D'Alton
Commissioned through Be SpectACTive!, a large-scale European cooperation project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. Co-produced by Dublin Theatre Festival, brut Wien (Vienna), SKCNS (Novi Sad) and Kilowatt Festival (Sansepolcro). Supported by Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin and Creative Ireland Longford.
2021
St Stephen’s Green Park
An unconventional moment of intimacy in the city, through text. Participants signed up to receive a letter which unfolded as both a personal memory of the space on the day it was written, and a document which invited you to experience a moment of connection with your surroundings. A micro, site-specific encounter which took place in St Stephen’s Green Park in Dublin city.
Created by Luke Casserly & Shanna May Breen
Commissioned as part of the International Literature Festival Dublin, 2021.
2020
A quiet and political gesture which invited a virtual audience to see the Irish landscape in real-time. An invitation to observe the passing of time in the Midlands bog.
From 23-28 December, Live Bog Project (2020) was available to watch online from anywhere in the world at any time of day. This durational project captured the movement of light from dawn to dusk, inviting an audience to connect with home from afar, and consider what will become of this site in 100 years’ time.
The project was dedicated to the last locomotives making their final journeys along the train-tracks in the bog during Winter as Bord na Móna in Lanesborough, Co. Longford came to a close.
Commissioned by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade as part of TO BE IRISH Initiative.
#LiveBogProject2020
CREDITS:
Created by: Luke Casserly
Videographer: Tiernan O’Rourke
2020 & 2021
1000 Miniature Meadows was a part sound project and part nationwide planting project which began with a letter sent to you at your home. Each participant was invited to step into their garden or that wild patch of green by their house and to listen to what it had to say. The project was a lively invasion of our outdoor spaces and an ambitious attempt to open out fresh conversations surrounding Ireland’s biodiversity crisis. As part of the experience, each audience member could expect a link to an intimate soundscape, a sachet of seeds, expert interviews and a conversation with a bumblebee.
Following a sell-out premiere for Dublin Fringe Festival 2020: Pilot Light Edition, 1000 Miniature Meadows was remounted in Spring 2021 via a unique network of listeners in Clare, Longford, Laois and beyond.
1000 Miniature Meadows (Video)
CREDITS:
Created by: Shanna May Breen & Luke Casserly
Sound Design: Brendan Farrell
Produced by: Carla Rogers
Artistic Documentation: Fergal Styles
Presented in partnership with Backstage Theatre & Centre of the Arts (Longford), Dunamaise Arts Centre (Laois) and glór Ennis (Clare). A co-commission by Dublin Fringe Festival and Science Gallery Dublin. Developed at FRINGE LAB with the support of Dublin Fringe Festival. Kindly supported by An Post.
2020
WHERE IS PLASTIC?
If you sit on your couch at home, it is there.
If you turn over a rock on a beach, it is there.
If you wait for the light to turn green, it is there.
We invite you, the listener, to look out the window and observe it being there. Framed by two voices, this site-specific soundscape delicately notices, with the observer, the presence of plastic on a street, in a city.
Presented as part of the Science Gallery, Dublin’s PLASTIC Exhibition.
Mould Into Shape: A Street View (Video)
CREDITS:
Created by: Luke Casserly & Shanna May Breen
Sound Design: Brendan Farrell
Additional photography: Fergal Styles
2019
Mould Into Shape is an ambitious and exciting sound-based performance by Luke Casserly & Shanna May Breen. The soundscape weaves together the voices and perspectives of people from a wide range of industries in Ireland including nature specialists, politicians, civil servants, children, cosmetic surgeons, waste disposers, commuters, etc. to create a poignant insight into how the material affects us in our day to day lives.
You the listener are invited to hop on board a new travelling soundscape of Dublin’s coast to unearth our national relationship to the material of plastic. Devised from conversations and interviews, this fizzy and rebellious sound journey will melt together the ideas of many.
The performance took place on the 21st and 22nd September 2019, with three journeys taking place each day. The audience met at the Science Gallery on Pearse Street before being lead to Pearse Street Station to board the DART in Dublin City Centre. The listener is brought on a journey through sound, listening to a beautiful and intricate soundscape composed of original music, interviews, and field noises which focus on the relationship we have with plastic in society today.
The performance concluded with a visit to Killiney Beach, taking place on the waterfront. Inspired by the natural beauty that surrounds us on our beaches, and how we must preserve them at all costs for future generations to enjoy.
CREDITS:
Created by: Luke Casserly and Shanna May Breen
Sound Design: Brendan Farrell
Music: Peter Kelly
Producing Consultant: Aisling O’Brien
Produced by: Richie O’Sullivan
Photography: Fergal Styles
A co-commission by Dublin Fringe Festival and Science Gallery Dublin in association with The Digital Hub. Supported by Pan Pan Platform at Dublin Fringe Festival in partnership with AOB Arts Management. Proudly sponsored by Iarnród Éireann. Initially developed as part of the Next Stage Programme as part of Dublin Theatre Festival 2018.
2019
“I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A person walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching them, and that is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.” -Peter Brook, The Empty Space (1968)
The theatre is a void, where we test the limits of our imagination in front of the audience. Nobody knew this better than William Shakespeare. In The Tempest (his last play before he died in 1616), he tackles timeless issues of existential angst, uncertainty, power dynamics, economic friction and social disharmony. Welcome to the remote island where shipwreck has condemned the crew of a mysterious ship to perform endlessly, day after day, in a continuous time loop. The question is: who exactly is everyone performing for?
A group of angst-ridden teenagers question their life in performing fragments from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Through the act of performance, they ask questions pertaining to mortality, philosophy and sociology, questioning the economic structures and oppressive forces that have condemned them to the void of the theatre.
CREDITS:
Concept, Text, Direction, Design: Luke Casserly
Lighting Design: Shane Gill
Costume Design: Catriona Maloney
Video Design: Choy-Ping Clarke Ng
Created in collaboration with the Transition Year Students in John Scottus Secondary School in 2019.
2018
Project Arts Centre, Dublin
A performance looking at the mysterious events surrounding the burning of St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Co. Cavan in 1943, and the question of generational inheritance when it comes historical events. A series of loop pedals are in the space, which contain sound-bytes from recorded interviews with philosophers, documentarians, academics and local residents. These sounds create a symphony (and eventually a cacophany) of perspectives which is live mixed by the performer in space.
The performance looks at the idea of the unanswered question, and how the theatre can become a medium, or ritual, to reimagine the chaotic tonality of past events. The piece meditates on the relationship between present space and past event, and where these two ideas collide.
CREDITS:
Concept, Performance: Luke Casserly
Additional Design: Ellen Kirk
Audio Visual and Sound: Dara O’Cairbre
Sound Consultant: Jenny O’Malley
Developed in conjunction with Anna Sophie Mahler and the PAN PAN International Mentorship Programme. Work In Development performance held at Project Arts Centre in 2018 as part of The Theatre Machine Turns You On (Vol 5.)
Full video available on request.
2018
The New Theatre, Dublin
Viva Voce is a living voice in defence of a thesis, or an idea. When it comes to conversations about madness, we still don’t really have an idea, or a clue. We can only look at the clues that other people leave behind.
A lecture on the history of madness in women becomes intimate as it engages with the personal experience of the speaker. Through transference, a doctor becomes a conduit for tensions, Sufjan Stevens, Virginia Woolf, bad phone sex, the transient meanings of madness, and the mystery of why so many men are called Matt.
Presented as part of Dublin Fringe Festival 2018. Developed through FringeLAB and The Lir Academy, Dublin.
CREDITS:
Written and Performed by: Lauren-Shannon Jones
Cameo Performer: Matt McGowan
Voice Over: Dylan Tighe
Directed by: Luke Casserly
Dramaturgy: Thomas Conway
Lighting Design: Shane Gill
Sound Design: Sam Hardiman
Costume Design: Ellen Kirk
Producer: Katie McCann
Stage Manager: Jennifer Aust
Assistant Director: Fenna von Hirschheydt
Full video available upon request.
PRESS:
★★★★
“an intimate, meta-theatrical interrogation of the modern concept of mental illness which offers its accessible re-evaluation…Director Luke Casserly inverts theatrical conventions which becomes a metaphor imploring the audience to do similarly with their preconceptions about mental health.” -TN2 Magazine
“An insidiously clever, adventurous and brave piece of art.” -GCN
“…takes what we think to be true about theatre, about health and about the human mind, and turns it on its head. Lauren-Shannon Jones delivers a convincing and emotionally engaging performance. Walking the line between reality and fantasy, between the real of the tangible and the real of the mind…” -Meg.ie
2017
Smock Alley Black Box
In 1984, a dead infant washed up on a beach in Cahirciveen, Co. Kerry. The whole world stopped. Once and for all, the illusion surrounding sexual propriety and decency in Catholic Ireland was shattered. efficacy 84 took the corrosive Kerry Babies case from 1984 as the lens for looking at urgent and vital issues of the present. Taking the shattered remains of this true and tragic event from Ireland in 1984, the audience witness the truth unfold in an unforgettable and haunting way.
efficacy 84 was an original piece of theatre devised and directed by Luke Casserly in collaboration with the company, deconstructing the controversial events surrounding the Kerry Babies case from 1984. The show premiered as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival 2017.
This bold and stark piece attempted to stitch back the broken pieces of a forgotten story, stretching out ideas around generational inheritance, national trauma, and the treatment of women in Irish society. Bringing together elements of text, documentary material, music, dance, and scenography, this multidisciplinary performance boasted an intellectual and visual style that left no room for easy answers.
Presented as part of Dublin Fringe Festival 2017. Supported by Trinity College, Dublin and Longford County Arts Services.
Full video available upon request.
CREDITS:
Devised and Performed by: Rua Barron, Alexandra Conlon, Simon Geaney, Síofra O’Meara, and Maia Purdue.*
Concept, Text, Direction: Luke Casserly
Additional Text: Simon Geaney
Associate Director: Fenna Von Hirschheydt
Dramaturgy: Ursula McGinn
Lighting Design: Paraic McLean
Costume Design: Ellen Kirk
Music and Sound Design: Benedict Esdale
Choreography: Claudia Kinahan
Producer: Dara O’Cairbre
Stage Manager: Líadan Ní Chearbhaill
ASM: Darragh Brennan
Wardrobe Supervisor: Alice Bellamy
*A Work In Progress performance took place in the Samuel Beckett Theatre in January 2017, with Lorna Kettle and Lisa Nally featuring in the original cast.
PRESS:
★★★★★
“…a harrowing recollection that does not judge, but witnesses the workings of “a thing of beauty and of absolute secrecy”… expressive, empathetic, and immensely enjoyable, efficacy 84 is everything Irish theatre should aspire to be.” -TN2 Magazine
★★★★
“A technical marvel- Casserly’s script works testimonies from the 1984 incident- concerning the death of two newborn babies- in with abstract movement, oblique comedy and exquisitely performed song to deliver a consistently diverting puzzle.” -The Irish Times
“…a strong cast and stunning technical aspects make this is a beautiful and evocative piece, timely and memorable.” -Meg.ie
“ A strong, affecting piece of theatre. A heartbreaking piece- an insightful exploration of a public and private story.” -Sitting on The Fourth Wall
2017
Studio, Samuel Beckett Theatre
Oh yes...that dream…I’m in India, I’m the king there, I’m the Maharajah, the people love me and I am wise beyond my years, Mahatma Charles they call me. I have a beautiful wife, all the riches in the world, and the adoration of the public. But I know there is one thing I am missing. A palace. An entire palace... made of chocolate. So I build one. Huge walls of rich dark chocolate, parapets of cocoa, vast towers made of creamy white chocolate, a fortress built entirely out of delicious, beautiful chocolate. A harem of chocolate beauties with hazelnut eyes and flaky chocolate hair. The vaults filled with ten thousand tons of ice-cream, rich and thick. But I don’t stop there, I keep building, I can’t stop creating this world of my imagination, I make chocolate furniture and chocolate clothes, I’m a chocolate king with chocolate subjects, I have a chocolate wife that looks lovingly at me with her chocolate smile, and I stare into the chocolate mirror and see a chocolate reflection of myself.
Schokoladenfabrik explored ideas of corruption, excess, and infant mortality. Taking the true events of the story of Madeleine McCann who went missing from her holiday apartment in the Algarve in 2007, the performance imagines two contradicting worlds: that of the infamous “Tapas Seven” who were at a nearby restaurant on the night Madeleine went missing; and the original cast of Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory in the 1970s. Using fragments from both stories, the performance formed a pastiche of toxic attitudes and gluttony through looking at a modern world in which we all feel a little lost sometimes.
CREDITS:
Devised by: Luke Casserly, Hannah Crowley, and Paul Miller
Cameo Performer: Emma Finnegan
Additional Text: Paul Miller
Lighting and Set Design: Luke Casserly and Paul Miller
Costume and Props Design: Hannah Crowley
Full video available upon request.