Oona Doherty (Ireland) – HOPE HUNT

Duration: 40 min.

Hope Hunting lies between the lines of physical theatre, social proclamation and dance. A thumping black golf head lights on sits in waiting, music thumping from its metal shield. A man who is many men leaks in out of the metal beat, his story, a hunt for hope.

The performer mutates into separate entireties. Morphing from one character to the next. Through speech, movement, and sound we are twisted and contorted through ideas of masculinity, morality and nostalgia. Through wet forgotten roads of memory, the hunter takes the audience with him.

He hits and swerves at extreme stereotypes of cultural and social class. The masks of men as a form of personal defence against the self and the world we live in today. The consequences of boredom on the psyche are ripped open through physical labour on stage.

Teetering on the fine lines between comedy and tragedy. To find the importance of self-belief. No matter where you are from, what class you are placed. There are essential needs of love ingrained in all of us. Removing the masks of ego and cultural affectations we hope to find a common ground of truth and hope.

Fade to white Lazarus rising as the concrete bird of Paradise. An attempt to deconstruct the stereotype of the concrete disadvantaged male, and raise it up into a Caravaggio bright white limbo. It looks to make the spides, the hoods, the gypsies, the knackers into the birds of paradise. It is a hunt for hope.

Oona Doherty is a dance artist based in Northern Ireland, who studied at St. Louise’s College Belfast, the London School of Contemporary Dance, the University of Ulster and the Laban Conservatoire in London. She holds a BA and MA in Contemporary Art. In 2017, she was named in the Irish Times’ top ten Irish artists. She is the recipient of the Venice Biennale’s Silver Lion Award in 2020.