Journal

Each phase of rehearsal has been important, but I knew that this past two weeks would be especially significant. I was confident that we had the material of the piece but I needed to find out its shape, to let its contours reveal itself as we assembled, disassembled and reassembled material and tested it under […]

Due Process was a two day programme of workshops, performance and food, bringing together local community groups, asylum seekers and refugees, as well as members of the arts community….I taught two movement workshops across the two days, both with an emphasis on sharing, creating, and most importantly having fun. The age diversity of the groups meant really having to throw out the normal dance class rule book, but it was a pleasure to get everybody moving, working and creating together.

We asked Kilian Waters to capture a flavour of the Bodies Politic Symposium that was the first public event of The Casement Project in February. This is the video he made. It’s encouraging to be reminded of the positive contributions and energy of the many people who attended.  

I hadn’t planned initially to have this phase of rehearsals in London but after the sense of connection to people who were supporting the project that I felt when we rehearsed there in September during Choreodrome, it was clear to me that we couldn’t disappear for half a year and then come back with a premiere. Maintaining and building on connections and networks of support felt like a necessity. And so, thanks to the help of The Place, we were able to rehearse for a week.

There is still much to process from the Bodies Politic Symposium. What was fascinating, as the day progressed, was to see a common energy and sense of shared cause in what might have been disorientatingly diverse material. By the end of the day, we could sense the potential of what Jesse Jones called, a radical solidarity between queers, feminists, people with disabilities, travellers, and other bodies long marginalised for their deviance (this true even of that ‘deviant’ majority – women – whose embodiment has long been stigmatised and consequently policed and disciplined.)

DRAFF magazine visited The Casement Project rehearsals in Dublin in December 2015 and produced this beautiful film, which gives a real sense of the inspirations and creative process behind the development of the dance work. Take 5 minutes to enjoy.

The quarry where we’re filming has provided, in the words of one of the four brothers whose family has run it for generations, the skeleton of Dublin. Granite from this quarry near Blessington has been used in state buildings and statues throughout the city. Its the connection to statues that has brought me there, invited […]

Below is the text I wrote to prepare for my presentation for the stimulating Theatre of Change Symposium organised by The Abbey Theatre and curated by Fiach MacConghail and Dominic Campbell. I didn’t read it so the video documentation will probably show how I deviated from the plan. However I didn’t want to spend my […]

Despite now having a very supportive and highly skilled team to help with production, communication and administration ( Project Arts Centre, Lian Bell, Annette Nugent), for the past two years of its creative and practical development I’ve held The Casement Project and its intricate networks of relationships, partners, and negotiations. We’ve been passing on as […]

I’ve gotten closer to Casement’s diaries. Having read them first a few years ago in an edition by Roger Sawyer, and more recently in Jeffrey Dudgeon‘s gay-friendly edition, I’ve been approaching them and Casement through archive material in the British Library and in the National Archives in Kew. In Kew, there is the letter from […]