thebelfastensemble

About the show…

Abomination began life when Ruth McCarthy, director of Outburst Arts asked us to provide a ‘closer’ for her festival in 2018; a short piece to celebrate the queer events of the previous week. Something ‘joyous’, she said. When we suggested a cabaret based on historical DUP statements she responded “I’ll design the poster myself!” And that’s how it started: a joyous cabaret to close a joyful week.

Perhaps the idea of using these words seems at odds with a celebration. But here context is everything. The gay community in Northern Ireland has been living with these statements, made by powerful people, for a long time. Harmful, difficult words that offend, dismiss, and - most problematically of all - go largely unchallenged and without repercussion. Words that seep into the skin, leaving a stain that some of us find it hard to wash off. Here was an opportunity to confront those words and - as queers often do - take possession of them; not defusing them, but re-electricfying their charge and refracting them through the prism of ‘moment’ and art. Owning them. That was joyous. That night. A celebration. And in that celebration, Northern Ireland tilted on it axis… in the right direction.

The cabaret event gave way to the creation of the full work you are about to see; one that would retain the essence of a ‘revue’, but with the added spine of narrative. For this, I looked to the infamous Iris Robinson interview with Stephen Nolan. Arguably the most provocative radio event of modern politics! Like the historical statements, these words - created live on air - have bled into the modern fabric of NI life. Iris’s character, and her on air duel with Nolan have entered the realms of national mythology - at once fascinating, problematic and… here we go, operatic.

Opera, as a form, immediately fitted the needs of both the statements (epic) and Robinson/Nolan (personal). It is flexible, yet strong - providing a dynamic range that can be dramatically stretched to house a revue show, a cabaret and an ethical battle - all at the same time. It is also no stranger to self mockery and parody - giving space for ‘numbers’ (arias) and comically melodic, often referential tones. These, to me, allow for artifice. In Iris’s opening moments, for example there is a Mozartian tone - a camouflage she loses when she drops her guard, revealing her true music. It creates a crucial dramatic game: what is truth? Better composers than I have used this device. Stravinsky and Britten come to mind. But it’s also a prevalent feature of cabaret and drag: the mask we present to the audience - challenging them to look beneath - or, at the very least, recognise when it is on and off.

But it’s also a welcoming ‘way in’ for those unfamiliar with new opera, and forbids musical self-investigation - something which can easily trap a score in amber and detach it from dramatic purpose. Abomination was - for me - both private and public art. Its creation felt personal, cathartic and yet, totally communal. Perhaps its greatest achievement - its only achievement - was the achievement of its creation and that joyful celebration; when Belfast artists, gay and straight, dared to challenge those in power by ‘singing their words back at them’. Perhaps it was Ruth’s poster? Or the fact that a theatre in Belfast would put it in their window? Perhaps it’s that. Perhaps that’s the achievement. The celebration. The joy. Change.  (Conor Mitchell, composer/director)