Deserter
My great great grandfather fought in the Civil War. On both sides.
A performance about desertion and the desert, set in a salt-floored sauna that doubles as a long jump pit, a confessional and a tequila communion bar. Commissioned by The Public, Dublin and It’s Queer Up North, Manchester, 2000.
Leslie
I come from a hot, dry rattlesnake place with skies that could break your heart and leave you for dead. Everything’s poisonous where I come from. You have to be tough to survive; the plants have needles and the animals have fangs and pinchers and scorpion tails and even the soft-looking horny toads squirt blood through their eyes if you try and touch them. It’s a landscape where pets lick you not to show affection, but to steal the salt from your skin. You need a lot of salt to retain any water in your body where I come from. Where I come from is a place on the edge – everything is on the edge of survival and wide-awake, just like you’d expect in a place like that.
Helen
It was so hot that the pavement stuck to your feet
It was so hot you could fry an egg on the pavement
It was so hot you could fry an ox on the pavement
It was so hot you could fry on the pavement
It was so hot that babies left in cars baked
And died
It was so hot the airplanes could not land on the tarmac
It was so hot your eyelashes melted together
It was so hot your ears shrieked
It was so hot your voice burned your throat on the way out
It was so hot you wanted to turn it down turn it over turn it off
It was so hot it wasn’t funny
It was so hot it was funny
“As smart as it is seductive”
– Sunday Tribune 2000