Age-Old
About
Age-Old is an intergenerational duet performance that I co-created with a 7 year-old girl, Carragh McLavin. Through movement composition, playful interaction with white plastic bags, film projection of the performers outdoors and attempts to ʻbecomeʼ animals, this performance explores adult-child and human-nonhuman relations. In making this work I wanted to better understand and develop an ethics and politics of adult-child artistic collaboration.
Presented in 2013 at Manipulate, Buzzcut, Imagine Ideas Exchange and Platform.
University of Glasgow, Summerhall (Edinburgh), Catherine Wheels Theatre Company, Platform
Media contributions
| Title | Age-Old review, 4 stars, The Herald |
|---|---|
| Media name/outlet | The Herald |
| Country/Territory | United Kingdom |
| Date | 5/02/13 |
| Description | Performance review of Age-Old, presented at Summerhall as part of Manipulate and Buzzcut (2013). URL and text copied below: https://www.heraldscotland.com/arts_ents/13090933.buzzcut-por-sal-y-samba-summer-hall-edinburgh/ Take the warren of interesting spaces that exists at Summerhall, add in the programming flair of Glasgow's Buzzcut, with its emphasis on new work by radical young artists, and you have a really enterprising start to Manipulate 2013 – one that flags up the potent energy of visual imagery in performance. Sarah Hopfinger's Age Old revisited an earlier solo where she gently melded childhood memories of place with shifts in outlook brought about by an adult perspective. This new episode saw her in cahoots with the unselfconsciously-forthright Carragh McLiven, aged seven. Again, a core strand was the natural world both real and as filtered through the prism of a child's imagination. But Carragh was no mini-Sarah, even when she echoed Hopfinger's movements or picked up on games-playing cues. What emerged was a tender, merry yet affecting dialogue about the distances – in noticing, understanding, believing –that grow in, and with us across years. The footage of them attempting to fly, with air-filled plastic bags as wings, was a joyous reminder that age needn't wither dreams or optimism. |
| Producer/Author | Mary Brennan |
| URL | https://www.heraldscotland.com/arts_ents/13090933.buzzcut-por-sal-y-samba-summer-hall-edinburgh/ |