
Plexus Polaire
MOBY DICK
21 - 25 Jan
La Pendue
LA MANEKINE
21 - 25 JanMimeLondon -
supporting contemporary visual theatre
Brú Theatre (Ireland)
NOT A WORD
Barbican, The Pit. Tue 21 > Sat 25 Jan. UK Premiere
A day’s labouring done, in a place that has never quite felt like home, a silent man plays a beautiful old tune as memory dances amongst his workman’s boots and few cherished trinkets.
This new piece of physical theatre merging mask, music and movement celebrates those who ‘took the boat’ - that forgotten class of Irish navvies, emigrants who helped build countries that were not their own. They worked hard, faltered and slowly faded from memory.
Performed by Raymond Keane, this ode to a self-exiled labourer seeks the beauty in the banal, finding poetry between the concrete cracks. With live electronic and traditional music accompaniment from Ultan O’Brien, Not A Word offers a moving portrait of one emigrant, echoing many people’s stories today.
There’s a beautiful poem at the end, spoken in Irish, which makes sense of the show.
Exile is Not a Word by Peter Woods: a translation
Exile is not a word
It is a sound
The rendering of skin
A fistful of clay on top of a coffin
Exile is not a word
It is shaving against
A photograph not a mirror
Exile is not a word
It is hands joined in supplication
In an empty cathedral
It is writing your own hagiography
It is a continuing atrocity
It is the purgatorial Triumph of memory
over topography
Exile is not a word
Exile is not a word
© Peter Woods
............................................................................................
Tue-Sat 7.45pm, Sat mat 2.30pm
Runs 60 mins/no interval
Age guidance: 12+
After-show discussion: Wed 22 Jan
Sold Out. Please check the theatre's booking page regularly as they may be able to make returned tickets available for booking.
“An evocative heart-rending piece about yearning and forgotten lives that weaves a spell”
“Devastating... You’ll be left with a lump in your throat” ****
“A strange and surprisingly powerful piece of theatre” ****
Photos: Emilijah Jefremova