Performance by Lynn-Marie Dennehy and Nicole Flanagan as part of 'One Here Now' at Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh

​

Using semaphore as a means to slow down the flow of information, this performance focuses on the past, present and future of Cobh. Taking its departure from the literary tradition of the ‘Aisling’, the poetic representation of Ireland as a woman, this work instead places the hawthorn tree as its main protagonist. The work is set in 1919, 2019 and 2119 with the hawthorn becoming the anthropomorphisation of Cobh and its historical, contemporary and predicted conversations of Irishness. The hawthorn is the traditional boundary between our world and the land of the ‘Sidhe’ or Faeries, a gateway between worlds and times. The hawthorn is a symbol of both good fortune and bad fortune, of past, present and future. It is an indicator of change and still regarded with both respect and suspicion in Irish culture. Barriers and borders have a central place in Irish history and, sadly, Ireland’s present, but what do they have in store for Ireland’s future?