The Field [stage directions] 
live performance




The Field [stage directions] (2022)
live performance [45 minutes]
360 transcribed stage directions
The Field [stage directions] (2022) is a revisitation of John B. Keane’s play The Field (1965). Exploring the language of gestures, this revisitation attempts to remember this contested narrative of land ownership and white settler colonialism by reciting the 360 stage directions inserted within the transcript. This live reading was paired with a bundle of slides which Herlihy found ten years ago at a car boot sale in their hometown in Waterford. These slides document a person’s holidays around the island of Ireland from July 1967 to May 1983, all of which consist of ubiquitous green fields.




Originally commissioned by Creative Futures Academy, the first iteration of this performance took place in a 1960’s lecture hall at University College Dublin. The Field [stage directions] has been displayed as a script during the exhibition KIN at Milchhof Pavillon, Berlin.