Every house has a door


As part of the Fellowship, Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca is creating a new performance philosophy project - An [Interrupted] Bestiary - through a process of thinking alongside the Chicago-based performance company Every house has a door as they develop their performance work, Carnival of the Animals.

The original collaboration planned for the Fellowship had to be reimagined due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Following a series of remote residencies, a first iteration of An [Interrupted] Bestiary will finally be presented in Chicago in September 2022, alongside the premier of Aquarium. Embedded within the large-scale, multi-year project The Carnival of the Animals, Aquarium is one act of the 14-movement work engaging the titles from Camille Saint-Saëns’s 1885 musical suite for children, but with a concentration on endangerment and extinction. An [Interrupted] Bestiary takes the form of an artist’s book and will be presented as part of a special exhibition created to coincide with the performance, including a screening of the short animated film, Done Dying co-imagined by Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca, Abi Weaver, Daniele Rugo and Nicola Sburlati with music by Steve Tromans and drawings by Eoin Ó Maoilearca.

The Carnival of the Animals

As the company describe: The newest, large-scale project The Carnival of the Animals collects a series of modular performance works following the 14-movement structure of Camille Saint-Saëns’s 1886 musical suite for children.

  1. Introduction and Royal March of the Lion

  2. Hens and Roosters

  3. Wild Donkeys Swift Animals

  4. Tortoises

  5. The Elephant

  6. Kangaroos

  7. Aquarium

  8. Characters with Long Ears

  9. The Cuckoo in the Depths of the Woods

  10. Aviary

  11. Pianists

  12. Fossils

  13. The Swan

  14. Finale

The Every house Carnival considers endangered and extinct species, with an original performance devised in response to each of Saint-Saëns’s titles, following those imaginative classifications. With sections of varying durations, media, and casting, Finnish artist Essi Kausalainen’s handmade costumes provide the visual/material common vocabulary, facilitating the celebratory transformation of human into hybrid entity. The intricacies of non-human life provide the foundation. Development of the first performances began in Autumn 2018 with Royal March of the Lion and Aquarium.

Every house has a door imagine that many of these movements, in their version, as very short, solos or duets, in different performance modes, styles, and time signatures. Other sections, like Aquarium, have a longer duration and involve the entire cast.

 The Carnival of the Animals international collaborative team includes

Director – Lin Hixson
Dramaturg – Matthew Goulish
Costumer and co-deviser – Essi Kausalainen
Company Manager – Sarah Skaggs
Assistant Director – Hannah Geil-Neufeld
Technical Director and Lighting Designer – Christine Shallenberg
Sound designers – Tim Kinsella and Jenny Polus
Performance philosopher – Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca
Performers and co-devisers – Selma Banich, Elise Cowin, Abhay Ghiara, and Bryan Saner plus others to be determined

An [Interrupted] Bestiary 

For Carnival of the Animals, Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca will collaborate with Every house has a door and Essi Kausalainen to create An [Interrupted] Bestiary: an artist’s book to be made available to audiences at all Carnival performances, beginning with the premier of Aquarium in Chicago in September 2022.

In September 2022, 3 Quires of the 14 Quire structure of An [Interrupted] Bestiary will be presented.

Quire I. Introduction and Royal March of the Lion

Quire VII: Aquarium

and

Quire XI: Pianists