A performative journey which takes you to the Irish bog landscape through scent
Distillation is a response to the recent cessation of the peat harvesting industry in Ireland. Over the past year, Luke Casserly has collaborated with renowned perfume maker Joan Woods to create a unique distillation of the Midlands bog – the place where he grew up – as the starting point for an olfactory encounter which looks at our human relationship to place. Dedicated to the future of our broken landscapes – in the hope that by listening to them, we might be able to better understand them.
This presentation of Distillation follows a critically and popularly successful, sold-out world premiere as part of Dublin Theatre Festival 2023, in addition to a North American tour which took place in 2024.
As an artist from the Midlands, Luke was inspired to make the piece as a way of stretching out further conversations around the environmental potential of the Irish bog landscape. The perfume featured as part of the performance has been designed by Joan Woods (Waters + Wild Organic Perfumery), who has collected and distilled botanicals from the Midlands landscape as part of the creative process.
Each audience member will receive a small sample of the custom-made perfume as part of the performance, and will be seated around a large sculptural table which is composed out of sustainably-sourced peat from the Irish Midlands.