Máiréad invites people to Slow Down for new work-in-progress
While boiling an egg one day, Máiréad Ní Chróinín suddenly became aware of the noise it was making while cooking and how the bubbling sounds in the water changed as the process continued.
She tucked the sounds away, ready to call on for future theatre work. Máiréad is the co-director of Galway’s Moonfish Theatre, which fuses music, theatre and technology to create such successes as Star of the Sea and Redemption.
She recently completed a PhD in Theatre and Body-Centred Technologies and it provided the impetus for her next work Slow Down (You Move Yoo Fast), which is launching next week as part of InterAction Galway, an initiative between Galway Theatre Festival and Galway 2020. InterAction was created by six theatre artists who embrace technology as a way of presenting work and developing audiences.
“It’s not your average theatrical piece,” she says about Slow Down (You Move Too Fast), which can be accessed online.
The audience can take part by downloading a 20-minute MP3 audio-file and going for a walk where the title of the piece will come to play.
Máiréad will be encouraging participants to tune into the rhythms of their own bodies and the constant, infinitesimal movement in the environment around them. The boiling egg mightn’t be part of it – but other daily sounds that we often don’t hear will.
Most of us use mobile phones, she says, and they’re always close to us, with apps such as step-counters scanning our movements and storing information about our bodies.
“My interest is in how technology is collected and used to monitor things,” she says, citing elite athletes as an example. Knowledge gathered from specific apps can allow them to align breath and heartbeat to streamline performance, and although she’s no expert, the process fascinates her.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
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