About the performance

Brief-Blue-Electric-Bloom is a unique piece of music-theatre that combines interpretive sign-language, poetry, contemporary classical music and film, where each element fuses seamlessly to tell of how love breaks down. It is by contemporary classical composer and writer Ailis Ni Riain, who is originally from Cork in Ireland, and explores her hearing impairment in her creative work.

Key Personnel

Ailis Ni Riain- Composer/Writer

Production Information

Running time at full length: 50 Minutes

Suitable for all ages

Medium use of text

Use of live music

Perfromance is a mixture of sign-language interpretation and English poetry

Currently available with BSL interpretation and audio description/ captioning

Touring Information

Small scale show (up to 400 seats)

Appropriate setting: Ideal for a very small scale – very intimate piece – c. 50-150 audience or less. Studio theatres or various non-theatre sites could also be explored.

Number of people on tour: 6

Number of peformers on stage: 4

Available to tour from 01 March 2012

Suitable for rural touring

Company History

Ailis Ni Riain is a contemporary classical composer and writer. Originally from Cork in Ireland, she moved to the UK in 1996. Ni Riain is hearing-impaired and has been exploring aspects of his impairment in her creative work since 2007. Her music has been performed all over Europe, on RTE and BBC radio and released on CD. As a Composer Ni Riain is represented by the Contemporary Music Centre of Ireland. As a Writer she is represented by the Casarotto Ramsay agency, London.

Recent Productions / Tours

Conversations We Wish We'd Had – 2010, FutureEverything Festival commissioned by Manchester Modernist Society/BEATEN, Gothenburg, Berlin, Glasgow, Cork, London and Liverpool 2007-2010/CELL, Library Theatre Manchester/DOWN, Metal, Liverpool for Liverpool Biennial

Reviews

“Beautiful Cracked Eyes, a series of unearthly scenes which surprise, move, stimulate and inspire – has undoubtedly set the scene here for a mysterious sound-scape – perhaps one of the most distinctive ever to grace the Purcell Room.” - John Wheatley, Tempo, July 2008

“The voices are orchestrated, the exchanges brittle as if a melodic line were to counterbalance the staccato. What emerges is a sense of the sweetness of a shared victimhood, created with such delicate intensity that it feels as if the audience itself is holding its breath”  Review of TILT, The Irish Times

“Ni Riain has constructed a thing of sad, haunted beauty and inherent musicality. Each rapid-fire phrase pummels the air in a series of blistering crescendos, passed around the family like a choral litany. In truth it’s an elegy to their own lost lives, building to a symphony fuelled by love and anger.” -Review of TILT, The Glasgow Herald