We’re All Mad Here, by Gráinne O Carroll, is an immersive performance depicting a limbo-space. In this bizarre work, experience interweaving physical theatre that draws upon mime, dance and visual art. We’re All Mad Here will debut at a The Fumbally Cafe this September, as part of Dublin Fringe Festival 2017. Inspired by the borderlines of the unknown, We’re All Mad Here invites you to enter a limbo-space of both physical absurdity and spiritual coherence taking you on a journey encountering strange beings, from a two-headed figure to a four-legged skirt, and anything in between.
In this limbo, the physical body describes the dialogue between our rational, emotional and spiritual selves. It is a spectacle of the discord as well as the harmony that our natural duality provokes. The resulting absurdity is as comic as it is confounding, as eerie as it is familiar. This piece incorporates 3 performers with varying backgrounds in the visual arts, theatre, mime and dance. All hailing from different corners of Europe they found eachother through a mutual enthusiasm for mime, which they studied together in Barcelona. The piece has original music devised in collaboration with the composer Daniel McDermott, whose classical raining is underpinned by contemporary quirks and experimentation. The score picks up on the key themes of limbo-space and the gently unfamiliar. Other main themes of the performance are that of light and dark, two-in-one, and the paralysis of decision-making.
The costumes have been designed and made by Gráinne using fabrics that complement her vision, designed to specifically influence the possibilities of movement. For example a silk blouse with dramatically elongated sleeves that float delicately around the dancers allowing the wearer to play with bodily distortion and bizarre proportions. This devised performance, We’re All Mad Here is a development of Gráinne’s collaborations last summer where she focused on ideas of the absurd, exposing irregularity within the mundane, and drawing many ideas from her thesis on the Logic of Nonsense in Lewis Carroll’s writing. When devising the trio experiment and play, keeping their minds open to meanderings thrown up by their lateral, experimental approach.
Since January 2016, artist Gráinne O Carroll has exhibited We’re All Mad Here in Light Moves Festival of Screen Dance, Limerick, The Courthouse Art Centre, Wicklow, and in Dublin The MART Gallery, The Complex Galley, The Chocolate Factory and the NCAD Graduate Showcase, to name a few. “As is the nature of this work it has never been shown the same way twice and has been in constant progression from gallery installation, to film, to performance. Versatility and openness is fundamental my practice and therefore embedded in the message I want to transmit.”
Promotional video footage: https://vimeo.com/224
