Global Desires

A TYPEWRITER, LIMBS, LIPS AND A THREE HEADED MONSTER ARE VITAL ELEMENTS OF DESIRE. AREN’T THEY?

Outlandish Theatre Platform is presenting an interdisciplinary performance project GLOBAL DESIRES at The Bank, Digital Hub, Dublin 8 this weekend.

Are you interested in the arts? What about science? Have you ever thought about the connections between both fields?

In Global Desires over thirty performers, a neuroscientist, a botanist and a creative team of multidisciplinary artists have performatively explored desire. The outcome of this collaborative process is a trio of experiences that combine art and science. Audiences are invited to explore the complexity of desire from multiple perspectives, in a radical Summerfolk redux ensemble performance inspired by Maxim Gorky’s 1904 play, by participating in a performance making workshop and by engaging with a performance conversation where the science of desire is contemplated by an artist, a neuroscientist and a botanist.

Outlandish Theatre Platform is one of Ireland’s key participatory theatre platforms co-creating exciting theatre and performance projects through community collaboration and by bringing together performance research and everyday experiences from the local to the global. The ensemble for Global Desires includes performers from nine nationalities as well as on screen performances by collaborators in Cork and Brasilia. Directed by Maud Hendricks the performance incorporates individual explorations of desire within the classical play text of Gorky’s Summerfolk, a pulsing soundtrack by Oli Ryan, movement by collaborator JJ, costume and set design by Liza Cox and lighting design by Pedro Pacheco.

In Summerfolk friends gather for a summer party and lay bare their extraordinary and ordinary desires, against a social context of pre-Russian revolution splendour. In Global Desires the ensemble of performers explore the performativity of desire in this classical text from their own lived-experience perspective. At a picnic a century later, invoking the Bataillean saying ‘a kiss is the beginning of cannibalism’ when talking about capitalism will lead you on to wonder “am I the cannibal or the devoured one?”

Global Desires is part of Science Week Festival 2023’s Human! As part of this festival, OT Platform will be hosting an exciting conversation with different perspectives on desire from science and the arts. Associate Professor in Psychology, Paul Dockree who is based in the Institute of Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin has participated in Outlandish Theatre Platform’s collaborative performance making workshops where performers address questions of desire essential to them; the desire to seduce, the desire to know more, the desire to play without considering the consequences and the desire for autonomy and basic human rights whilst living in Direct Provision. Connections between performance questions and Dockree’s research into mechanisms of attention and spontaneous thought are in abundance. In the performance conversation with Paul Dockree and botanist Michael Williams, Joan Somers Donnelly will guide us through desire questions within the realms of plants and humans.

Ensemble:

Ingrid Beatriz, Fióna Bolger, Polina Cosgrave, Laurence Cunningham, Joan Somers Donnelly, Mark Dyer, Clara FitzGerald, Fatoumata Gandega, Neo Gilson, George Hooker, Daniel Kamenyezi, Bernie O’Reilly and Luca Pierucci.

Co-creation science panel:

Neuroscientist Paul Dockree plus additional speakers

Creative Team:

Viviane Monteiro Barbosa, Larissa Brigatti, Liza Cox, Maud Hendricks, JJ, Bernie O’Reilly, Pedro Pacheco, Oli Ryan

Global Desires Performance Conversation

18/11 at 2.30pm

Global Desires Performance Conversation Online Stream

19/11 at 7pm