Not A Word

Premiered as part of Galway International Arts Festival, July 2023.

Image Emilija Jefremova

If you never return to where you’ve come from, is this place you are now home? 

Not A Word invites you to sit with a silent man on another unexceptional evening. A day’s labouring done, in a place that has never quite felt like home, he plays a beautiful old tune as memory dances amongst his dirty boots and cherished trinkets.

Brú Theatre returns to the Galway International Arts Festival with the premier of a new piece of physical theatre merging mask, music and movement in a celebration of those who took the boat - worked hard, faltered and slowly faded from memory. This excavation of a forgotten class of Irish navvies - those emigrants who helped build a country not their own, seeks the beauty in the banal, the poetry between the concrete cracks.

Performed by Raymond Keane, with live electronic and traditional music from Ultan O’Brien, Not A Word offers a moving portrait of one emigrant echoing many people’s stories today. This ode to a self exiled laborer, making his way in this small space between places, is directed by James Riordan with mask design by Orla Clogher.

Director: James Riordan

Producer: Jill Murray

Performer: Raymond Keane

Composer/: Ultan O’Brien

Poem-Exile is Not a Word by Peter Woods

Set Designer: Andrew Clancy

Mask Design: Orla Clogher

Lighting Designer: Sarah Jane Shiels

Sound Designer: Jenny O’Malley

Costume Designer: Saileóg O’Halloran

Production Manager: Mark Carry

Stage Manager: Sorcha De Faoite

Assistant Stage Manager: Madison Carpenter 

Chief LX: Michael Foley

Sound Engineer: Ellen Culloo

Technical Manager: Michael O’Halloran 

Technical Assistant/Intern: Shane McDonagh

Crew: Mark Byrne, Denis Browne, Matthew Cunningham, Simon Daly, 

Irish Language Advisor : Caitlín Ní Chualáin