Performance at Dublin Castle and St. Werburg’s Church, Dublin
The Spy at the Gate was a commission from curator Michelle Browne to work within the historic site of Dublin Castle as part of a performance art based programme, These Immovable Walls: Performing Power. This programme also commissioned other established performance artists such as Alastair MacLennan and Sandra Johnston to make work in response to the site. I wanted to examine the universal theme of the bond between mother, Emily, Duchess of Leinster and child, Lord Edward Fitzgerald from both their perspectives. Through research based performance, I appear as both mother and son, and explore the differences in their politics and the dichotomy of gender and generation. My work has a keen focus on emotive, highly considered performance art to commemorate women’s lives. Here, I gave voice to a mother of an important game changer in the Irish political landscape, who she was and how she lived. The performance was staged in four parts, traveling from The Apollo Room of the Dublin Castle, down through the Castle with the audience following, through the gardens and out onto the street down to the nearby church of St. Werburgh’s, the site where Lord Edward was secretly buried. The audience engagement was important here and all members of the audience were given a white balloon with a name of one of Emily’s twenty two children, situating the audience members in these roles. This work was supported by the Arts Council and the OPW. This work was presented in an innovative, historic OPW site and was of an historic Irish context. The work also examined the gendered roles and differences between mother and son, class power (and attempts to break away from it).
Pauline was assisted in the performance by Renée Heléna Browne and Sinéad Keogh.
Costume by Assumpta Broe.
The performance design was as follows:
Part 1 The Apollo Room, where Emily, Duchess of Leinster, (Cummins), tells about her life and times.
Part 2 The tea party, where the audience provide the soundtrack for Emily’s dancing with their tea spoon and tea cups.
Part 3 The journey through the Castle, led by Keogh and Browne.
Part 4 Lord Edward Fitzgerald (Cummins), Emily’s 5th son, in Saint Werburg’s Church the site of his secret burial in June 1798.
