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James Riordan speaks up about Brú Theatre’s Not a Word
Irish navvies and physical theatre seem worlds apart, but they are brought together this January as an extraordinary juxtaposition in Brú Theatre’s Not a Word, part of MimeLondon. We were thrilled to get the chance to hear more about it from Artistic Director James Riordan.
Hi James. Firstly, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with us today. Can you begin by telling us a little about what happens in the show?
Hello and thank you for having me! Our piece Not a Word is a very simple story – an aging 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. We watch him play cards, look out at the world below, slowly dance, take out his good suit and eventually make a decision about returning home.
What initially prompted you to create the show?
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. I wanted to create a moving painting, a piece that sits with longing and with memory.
You blend traditional and contemporary artistic practices from the West of Ireland. What’s involved there?
I am really inspired by the West of Ireland – the languages, landscapes and literature of the place. 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. Our shows vary from mask theatre to lament, ensemble to drag and so every one of them is unique. I often look at Irish superstitions, rituals and music when making work, and we work bilingually in English and Irish. I trained in Physical Theatre and Devising in LISPA London and the APT Berlin, and a lot of the contemporary theatre techniques I learned during that time in terms of creating images and tensions still apply to the work Brú makes today.
Photo Credit: Jess Harkin
Why did you decide to create a non-verbal production?
I love mask theatre and the depth of story you can tell with a masked, silent performer. I was keen to ask the audience to really sit with this man, to really observe the minutiae of his life, how he cuts bread or cleans the floor. To slow everything down. Creating this show with Raymond [Keane], a fantastic artist and performer who knows the world of masks really well, has been a beautiful process indeed.
Can you talk about the use of masks in the show, and how they were created?
There is one mask in the show, which was designed by Orla Clogher with whom I have worked a lot. My first piece with Brú, called Cleite, was a mask piece based on the superstitions of the fishing communities of the West of Ireland, and I really enjoyed the language of Mask. For this piece we wanted to create a mask that can be moved and manipulated throughout, so Orla worked on finding the perfect clay and weight so that Raymond can wear it comfortably for the duration of the show.
There’s also live music. What can you tell us about that?
Yes, there is lots of live music! We created the piece with Ultan O’Brien, a very talented fiddle player. He has composed new music for the show, along with playing some traditional tunes throughout. The music moves between a more electronic string sound to the more traditional violin throughout the show. It is the blend of the movement and the mask in motion that really makes the piece sing.
Not a Word is very much about the working class. How does it feel placing the show in an institution like the Barbican?
It feels brilliant to be able to share a story like this with audiences of the Barbican. So many Irish people have stories of labouring men in their families who moved to England years ago to build the canals and roads of the city and who slowly disappeared. It feels cool to be bringing one of those stories, of a man who once lived in the same city as the Barbican and had a small part in building the city’s structures, to the theatre and the festival.
Thanks very much to James for taking the time to talk about this fascinating production.
Not a Word plays at the Barbican Pit as part of MimeLondon 2025 from 21st-25th January.
Further information and booking details can be found here.
