SPIELZEITERÖFFNUNG mit Sheena McGrandles: DAWN. A Musical on Reproduction

In the organizer's words:

OPENING OF THE SEASON
September 20, 2024

DAWN by and with Sheena McGrandles
Abhainn by and with Lara Gallagher
afterwards: Season opening party!

One ticket for everything - pay once, experience the whole program!

DAWN
In an autofictional musical, Sheena McGrandle combines personal experiences with myths and stories from antiquity and the present to speculate on new ways of starting a family. Together with a temporary collective of Berlin-based artists, DAWN explores different perspectives on parenthood and the symbolic power of the child as a bearer of hope. Where does the human need to start a family come from? Which bodies are allowed and able to reproduce, how and where? What desires do we project onto a child who, as part of a new generation, could permanently change our current society with its classic family constructs and role distributions?

Four bodies on the brink of fertility begin a dialog with Dawn, the goddess of dawn, who dies every evening only to awaken to new life in the morning. Together with a small choir of childless people, the ensemble creates an experimental musical that combines concert, spoken word and performance to create a multi-layered and humorous artistic work.

ABHAINN
Abhainn (Irish for 'river' or 'tributary') explores authentic identity construction in Ireland using electronics, voice, violin, piano and double bass to loosely depict the story of Éanna, a woman navigating Dublin in the year 2024. Essentially, this piece seeks to explore the synchresis of audio and visual communication by presenting sonic, operatic and theatrical elements as one, presenting sound as a medium inextricably linked to identity; an involuntary solvent of the self. Through encounters with seagulls, a series of pints, a show with a group of street performers and an engagement with four bicycles, a garbage truck and a shopping cart, the piece attempts to weave multiple tableaux/influences of the self to find the perfect Irish woman set to music (Cathleen Ni Houlihan of today?).

DAWN and Abhainn are part of Zeitgeist Ireland 24, an initiative of Culture Ireland and the Irish Embassy in Germany. Presented by arte.

More info here and here.