SPIN SPIN SCHEHERAZADE

SPIN SPIN SCHEHERAZADE is a live artwork . It blends autofiction and oral history to create a humorous and passionate monologue. Barry directs and writes for her longstanding collaborator Einat Tuchman. The performance is rooted in a form of artistic ‘barefoot anthropology’, it recounts her tenuous interactions with the land, farming, man, and animal. It reflects the boundaries of art and the rural every day. Orla Barry draws on her background running a successful pedigree Lleyn  flock alongside her art practice. She plays with the fractured relationship of agriculture, gender and the natural world. But the monologue also deals with the materiality of words and approaches to writing and speaking to accentuate this physical and embodied understanding of language as form.

She tips me up & drags me onto a slippery wooden board.
She lets my head come around so she can break open the softness near my skin. That feels good.
So we have to create creatures to fit packages. My heart goes numb.
He looks at my hands.
They are all covered in blue antibiotic spray
combined with sheep shit
and it’s all stuck deep under my fingernails.
There’s the Sophisticated Shepherd and of course there’s the Giant Gallant Shepherd, too.
The shepherds’ voices are raised.
Nasty snarls fly around, dissonance reigns.
It’s a polycentric chaos.
The whole room is vibrating with angry shepherd energy.
The shit-tank man comes back out of breath ...
“Fuck it, I forgot my gun,” he says.
“Do you have a knife?”
I am running down the field, my hair trying to keep up with my body as I go.
The Pigapotamus Pawn fiddles with his coat and turns to
his skinny friend and says, “I think we’d better be going.”
Click to enlarge
2019
Live performance & sound Installation

Written and directed by Orla Barry; Performed by Einat Tuchman; Design assistance by Tanad Williams & Lutece Mauger; Commissioned by MuZee, Oostend and EVA International; Funded by Arts Council of Ireland and Culture Ireland; Support Kaaitheater & Wexford Arts Centre

 

2022 EVA international | 2020 WOWmen festival KAAI theatre, Brussels | 2019 SPIN, SPIN SCHEHERAZADE | TAZ festival, Oostend | Playground Festival, Museum M, Leuven