Nature at heart of artists’ poetic response to Covid
Arts Week with Judy Murphy
''A poetic response to Covid,” is how film director Mia Mullarkey describes Éiru’s Threshold, a multi-disciplinary work from the Body & Soul Festival which will premiere online this Saturday, February 13, at 8pm. It was shot on the grounds of Westmeath’s Ballinlough Castle – the venue for Body & Soul – during the latest level five lockdow and features some of Ireland’s top female actors, dancers, designers and musicians. They include Druid co-founder Marie Mullen, Galway dancer Stefanie Dufrense and Mia, whose film-making career began in Galway City “at 10 or 11 when my parents bought a video camera”. Back then, she took on the role of director, enlisted her brothers and sisters as actors in dramas she created and, now based in Dublin, she’s never looked back.
Most of the team on Éiru’s Threshold are women, but it’s not a project fuelled by feminism, Mia stresses. It deals with death and rebirth, something that’s usually associated with the feminine – and she points out that you don’t have to be female to have a feminine side.
The project began when the founder of Body & Soul, Avril Stanley, invited creative director, Mary Hickson, who has extensive experience of running venues and festivals, to collaborate on a project.
They decided to use the Celtic goddess Éiru as a method of exploring the space that exists between things – the threshold, says Mia. In mythology, Éiru represents Ireland, so she seemed like an apt metaphor for the current strange times.
The 10-minute piece, “which is beautiful in a poetic way”, features two new poems by Doireann Ní Ghríofa encapsulating the cycle of birth and death, as well as a reworking of Henry Purcell’s poignant classical aria, Dido’s Lament.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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