Celebrating those who ‘took the boat’, a forgotten class of Irish emigrants who helped build countries that were not their own, Not A Word is a poignant production that offers a moving portrait of one emigrant that echoes many people’s stories today. Featuring live electronic and traditional music, it’s an ode to a self-exiled labourer, which seeks the beauty in the banal and the poetry between the cracks.
Created by Galway’s Brú Theatre, the production opens as part of this year’s MimeLondon festival and is performed by Raymond Keane with musician Ultan O’Brien under the direction of the company’s artistic director James Riordan.
Ahead of opening, we had the chance to catch up with Riordan and Keane to find out more about Not a Word and why it’s important that this production opens in London.
Q&A with James Riordan and Raymond Keane
How does it feel to be bringing Not a Word to MimeLondon 2025?
James: It feels like a big deal! We are really looking forward to bringing the work to MimeLondon. I lived in London years ago and the festival was always one of the highlights- a great chance to see physical theatre from across Europe. To be part of the festival this year feels full circle for me. It is a brilliant opportunity for Brú to show audiences in London what we do, along with being part of a programme of great work.
Raymond: I am beyond excited for Brú Theatre’s “Not a Word’ to play Mime London Festival at The Barbican Pit. I am a huge fan of this festival and its previous incarnation as London Mime Festival which has always been a standout festival for me. I have attended it many times over the years and had the privilege of presenting a show back in 1997.
“Not a Word’ is a perfect fit for Mime London in form and content. Brú Theatre is one of the most exciting companies in Ireland and on the international stage making work that is cutting edge while steeped in theatrical tradition. Led by artistic director James Riordan, the company makes work that transcends language boundaries, even when words are present, telling vital and vivid stories through image, gesture and music, making total theatre of the highest calibre.
Not a Word is an Irish story set in London. It is imperative that it plays in its own setting. We cannot wait for London audiences to experience it and it them. It will be a fantastic conversation.
What can you tell us about the production?
James: Not a Word is a very simple story- an ageing man comes home from a hard day’s labouring, puts on his old records and remembers… It is almost completely without text and the performer is wearing a mask made of clay throughout. The piece has an original score composed and played live by musician Ultan O’Brien and the music is a mix of electronic and traditional tunes. The ideas for Not a Word came from research on stories and photographs of the Irish navvies- men who emigrated to the UK from Ireland years ago to build the country’s roads and canals. Many of the men never returned and slowly faded from memory, and this is our artistic ode to them.
How would you describe the show?
Raymond: A masked, concrete-dusted Navvie (building site labourer) returns to his bedsit exhausted after a long hard day’s work on a London building site. He lives a lonely life finding simple pleasures in his simple routines. But behind his mask, (pun intended), there is an unscratchable itch, a deep pervasive longing for home.
Can you tell us about how Brú Theatre developed the work?
James: Every show we make has a different process, depending on the people involved, the forms we are interested in and what kind of story we are telling. Creating this show with Raymond, a fantastic artist and performer who also lived in London and knows this world, has been a beautiful process indeed. Our shows vary from mask theatre to lament, ensemble to drag and so every one of them is unique.
I trained in Physical Theatre and Devising in LISPA London and the APT Berlin, and a lot of the techniques I learned during that time in terms of creating images and tensions still apply to the work Brú makes today. We have some brilliant associate artists and designers working within the company and have a shared language on theatre making which really helps the process. Our newest show, premiering later this year, is inspired by miracles and will be a co-production with Lisbon’s Teatro Do Silêncio.
When did you first become involved in the development of the show, Raymond?
Raymond: In 2021, James approached me with the idea of developing his early ideas for Not A Word. We had met on Isis Óirr by accident or by fortune where I attended a performance of his Ar Ais ArÍs and he attended a performance of mine, an Irish language version of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days/Laethanta Sona.
Both pieces were site specific. I think we became immediate fans of each other’s work or, as my wife would put it, a bromance was born. Said fandom and/or bromance ensued. We found we had a shared interest in mask theatre and non verbal visual communication. James’s vision and passion for the piece was seductive. I fell for it and into it. We both felt we knew this Irish navvy emigrant, albeit from different perspectives. We both have spent time living in London, him as a theatre practitioner and me as a hairdresser – yes I was a hairdresser before what I am now, working on The King’s Road in the late 70’s/early 80’s.
Our shared, if very different in time and experience as emigrants, formed the basis of our understanding and how we would approach the telling of this story. It is not our story but perhaps the story of our fathers, uncles, neighbours, men who we knew we knew and are a product of.
After many conversations, our first deep dive exploration took place over a week at The Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig, a residential facility for artists in County Monaghan. James had Orla Clogher, our mask designer, make us a base mask to play with and together with Ultan and I we formed a scaffolding (pun intended) of what was to come.
You perform alongside a musician, Ultan O’Brien – how important is the interplay between the physical performance and the music in the production?
Raymond: It is true to say that there is no show without the music of Ultan. Apart from Ultan’s brilliant composition and virtuosic playing, it is music, traditional Irish music, itself that is my character’s connection to his past, present and future. It is his solace, his nurture and his pain. In performance Ultan and I agree to disagree who plays who. I will argue he bows my very bones with violin and viola. I am played by him. My body and soul but responds. It is a profoundly deep and beautiful experience.
How does it feel to be performing the show in London where so many Irish emigrants have settled over the years?
James: As someone who spent many years living in London, I’m really happy to be bringing a piece of work that speaks to something that’s been happening in Ireland for a long time. So many Irish families have a story in their history like the one we are telling. I hope it lands with the London Irish community and beyond. London is so vibrant, full of different cultures and histories of people not originally from the city. It feels cool to be bringing one of those stories, of a man who once lived in the city and had a small part in building its structures, to audiences of the festival.
Is there anything you hope audiences take away from the production?
James: I hope that they take away some curiosity about these hard working men who blended into the background of the city for so long. Hopefully some audiences who haven’t seen much mask theatre will also leave with a taste of how much of a story you can tell through the silent body in motion.
Raymond: If we believe ‘the mask’ is the very essence of theatre itself whereby it allows and encourages the very elixir of subjective interpretation my hope is that Not A Word and its audiences achieve both collective and individual conversations. I strongly believe we all know this masked navvy. We have met him on the streets, seen him on building sites. We may be related to him, befriended him and/or ignored him, turned to and away from him. Whichever, he is part of who we are on this island of Ireland, England and Great Britain. He is a part of our collective history well worth revisiting, to look again from who we are now.
Brú Theatre’s Not a Word runs in The Pit, Barbican from 21 to 25 January 2025.
MimeLondon runs in venues across London from 14 January to 2 Feb 2025.
