Photo by Drew Forsyth
MUSHROOM LANGUAGE: A FUNGAL GOTHIC
premiered for a sold out run at The Lowry in October 2023
and is now touring
"dreamy, disquieting and dystopian....striking and playful...bewitching" - Live Art Alive
"a text of our time" - Adventures in Theatreland
"highly original" - British Theatre Guide
Mushroom Language is an eco-horror devised piece about the cycles that shape us - eruption, reproduction and decay. It is both eerie and darkly funny.
Fungi are the third kingdom on earth. More like us than we realise, they are closer to animals than plants. Fungi can digest plastic and toxic waste, solve mazes, woo pigs, collaborate with plants to form lichen and change our brain chemistry. Mushrooms are slightly magical - and that’s before we get to psychedelics. To study fungi is to study death, birth, our changing planet and our inner landscapes.
What happens in ML? Two performers try to learn and act out 'mushroom language' through ritual and power dynamics. They move between having frank conversations about the cycles that shape us - eruption, reproduction and death - and high camp role play, acting out the lichen love stories, spore shoot-outs and truffle siren songs found in our forests. The design language uses a combination of natural materials (piles and piles of sticks ) and "trashy" props (swimming caps, water bottles, fluorescent stockings, plastic baby dolls) to help them along the way. It's funny and frightening. The language the performers speak is sometimes graphic (about shit, about rot, about sex) and sometimes highly beautiful and poetic (about trees communicating and crows speaking prophesies).
Mushrooms offer us a lens into a more sustainable future, but nature is hilarious and terrifying. We've been speaking to mushroom farmers, psychedelic explorers and foragers along the way, and in this next period of activity we’ll be organising a woodland-based workshop strand alongside the show’s development to build audience and engage new age groups in the climate-conscious ideas behind our show. We think that mushrooms may hold lessons for our survival as humans on earth - they can clean oil spills, heal depression and speak to trees.
Developed with the Lowry and supported by Arts Council England. Our R&D was supported by artistic partners including Wainsgate Dances, Dartington Arts, Slung Low and New Adelphi Theatre & science partners including Live Wild and the British Mycological Society. Supported by Arts Council England.
- Programming opportunities for multi-day runs in 2024-2025
- Conversations with partners about workshops & talk programmes to introduce audiences to the world of mycology & ecology, supporting broader awareness around eco-futures, supporting increased environmental responsibility
Creative Team:
Lead Artist/Performer & Text: Ali Matthews
Co-Devisor/Performer: Tom Halls
Sound Design/Original Music: Hannah Miller (of the Moulettes)
Set & Costume Design: Ruta Irbite
Production Design & LX: Rob Athorn
Dramaturgy: Kate Adams
Movement Consultant: Simone Kenyon
Producer: Plum Grosvenor-Stevenson
Videographer: Georgiana Ghetiu
Audio Description: Vicky Ackroyd of Totally Inclusive People
Tech Info and full show recording for programmers available by request.