Journal

I’ve published an article in the Irish Studies Review special edition on Revolutionary Masculinities edited by Dr. Jennifer Redmond. The article reflects on the legacy of The Casement Project as the largest of the Arts Council’s commissions in its ART:2016 commemorative programme and how through the project and with the help of Casement’s queer life and afterlife, dance has infiltrated the archives in new ways.

I’m delighted that The Casement Project features in Centenary, a new publication commissioned by the Minister for Culture to document the Ireland 2016 Centenary Programme.

It was very nice to have I’m Roger Casement included in the long-list for the Film and TV Award in The Galas. The Galas honour LGBT+ people and organisations for their contributions to Irish society.

As part of Bodies Politic, the first of The Casement Project‘s public activities in 2016, I invited academics to have conversations with artists whose work in the context of commemoration had something to communicate about bodies in Ireland. One of the conversations was between Prof. Karen Till, from the Geography department in Maynooth University (and […]

Here’s a video of my talk at the Mapping Spectral Traces 8: The Place of the Wound Symposium last October about The Casement Project as a choreography of visibility.

Thanks to the brilliant Annette Nugent and  Kate O’Sullivan, we’ve been able to put together this report that tracks some of the way that communications worked for The Casement Project, how we did it and who we reached.  I’m hoping that there’s useful information in this for many artists, funders, commissioners and programmers, regardless of what scale we’re working on.

I’ve been trying to track down the actor who voiced the roll call of death that we used in the sound design for Butterflies and Bones and for I’m Roger Casement. The script is no help since it lists all of the actors without allocating their roles. David Rudkin couldn’t recall either which of the actors it might have been. But I remembered that the script from the recording was in Rudkin’s archive at the British Library and I hoped it might have some clues about who voiced which part

So in the spirit of Future Retrospection, I want to imagine a 2023 in which we will have commemorated the independence of the Irish national body by celebrating the confident freedom of a diversity of Irish bodies, autonomous but interdependent, recognising that individual flourishing depends on the flourishing of many others.

“Fearghus spoke eloquently about the role of empathy in Butterflies and Bones. It is work that aims to fragment our assumptions of who belongs and who does not, who is inside and who is outside. The dancers’ bodies are interactive and interdependent throughout, even when in seeming conflict. Amid public arguments about who belongs in the United Kingdom and who does not, it is a timely message.”

Over 83,000 people watched I’m Roger Casement on RTÉ last month (broadcast on RTÉ One and on the RTÉ Player). It was always important to me that our beautiful film would reach many people, many more than might come ever come to a live performance.