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 on the culture of disconnection from the natural world and 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.
The performance takes place in the gallery over a series of 'stops' or 'chronicle points'. There are chance elements which disturb the narrative procedure. All the story knobs are turned up to ten the whole way through. The performance engages and satisfies primal emotions in a very unstable format which brings memory into focus and knocks the viewer off balance. Barry 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.
combined with sheep shit and it’s all stuck deep under my fingernails.
It’s polycentric chaos. The whole room is vibrating with angry shepherd energy.
“Fuck it, I forgot my gun,” he says. “Do you have a knife?”
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