The Scavenger's Daughters. A performance work for the 20th Anniversary Performance Season
The work is an ambiguous portrait of two sisters and, like much of Barry's work, is rooted in the tensions between visual and literary representation. It weaves together three monologues, which constantly fail to form a narrative dialogue. The title refers to the act of scavenging for words, ideas, food and emotions. The work employs a powerful combination of poetic writing and theatrical performance to reveal a fictional narrative concerned with intimate relationships and the inability to communicate, providing a unique visual and physical experience of language.The eponymous sisters could be taken to represent simply sisterhood. However, they could also be lovers, or two opposite aspects of one mind: the intellectual as opposed to the corporeal, adult versus adolescent, a world of reason as against a world of play. The Scavenger's Daughters is the first in a series of wide-ranging performances at IMMA during May to mark the 20th anniversary of the foundation of the Museum in 1991. Admission is free but booking is essential.