A show about a celebrity chicken is one of four Irish plays at this year’s Bealtaine Theatre Festival
iPhoto caption: 'Chicken.' Photo by Hildegard Ryan.
This piece of contemporary Irish theatre stars a talking fowl with a ketamine habit. Its creators are anything but chicken.
Eva O’Connor and Hildegard Ryan, the co-founders of Sunday’s Child Theatre, land in Toronto this May with their touring solo show about the rise and fall of a bird-turned-celebrity who has a substance abuse disorder. Chicken, which premiered to critical acclaim at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2023, is part of the second annual Bealtaine Festival, a showcase of contemporary Irish theatre presented by the Canada Ireland Foundation. (The rest of the lineup features two plays by the company Brokentalkers, known for form-forward work and collaborations with non-theatre artists, as well as an adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses for audiences aged eight and above.)
Ryan and O’Connor co-created Chicken, with the former directing and the latter playing the show’s feathered protagonist: a Kerry cock named Don Murphy. “It’s about otherness,” said O’Connor in a video call, “and the deep desire everyone has to fit in.”
“[Don] really sees himself as the underdog,” said Ryan during the same conversation, “because he’s a nobody Irish chicken. But he’s so obsessed with being the underdog that, as he’s climbing the ranks, he never sees that he’s actually made it. The journey of the play is him realizing that he actually is privileged now: he could be fighting for chicken and animal rights, but he’s too obsessed with his own career and success.”
“It’s a very human and relatable story,” O’Connor added. “It’s just told through the mouth of a talking chicken who literally pecks for the entire hour onstage.”
O’Connor and Ryan met in Berlin in 2012 while both were studying abroad. They’ve been making theatre together ever since, and they’ve never been afraid of leaning into a bold theatrical image. In Mustard, which premiered in 2019, the protagonist covers themselves with condiments. And Friday Night Effect, first produced in 2017, has a choose-your-own-adventure structure that could possibly lead to the main character’s death.
How the pair’s process begins depends on the project. “For Mustard, Eva wrote that solo and then came to me,” said Ryan, “and we produced it together. For other works like Chicken, Friday Night Effect, or another play, Afloat, which was about climate change, we start with a big, almost trashy, brash concept.”
“Hildegard and I are both vegan,” said O’Connor. “Hildegard was like, ‘We should make a play about veganism where we put the audience in a cage!’” The idea of audience imprisonment didn’t stick, but the themes raised by the duo’s initial conversations lingered. They decided to run with the idea of a chicken as the central character.
“We were really under pressure,” O’Connor reflected. “We only had a month to write it before the Edinburgh Fringe, and it felt like a big creative risk.”
Ryan jumped in: “That’s the good thing about working with Eva. I’ll be like, ‘Will we do this play? Who knows?’ And Eva’s like, ‘Oh no, I’ve signed us up for Edinburgh, so we’re doing this.’ I’m like, ‘What?!’ Eva’s like, ‘You’re welcome.’ If it was just me, I’d be in my room having thoughts, and that would be as far as it would go.”
O’Connor spoke about her collaborator with equal praise: “Hildegard has these amazing visual aesthetic instincts. So many other artists are like, ‘I’m so jealous. I wish I had a Hildegard.’”
To realize a premise as absurd as Chicken’s, the duo brought in other collaborators who gave no clucks about embracing the ridiculous.
“Sarah Blanc, a choreographer and movement director, workshopped with us how a chicken moves and walks,” explained Ryan. “We incorporated movement into the performance in such a way that Eva can still emote, but never drops out of chicken [physicality]: the neck, the head, the posture.”
“Sarah was amazing,” O’Connor said. “She just came in and started walking like a bird. When you do a show like chicken, you realize how weird everyone actually is,” she joked.
Bryony Rumble, a frequent collaborator with the U.K.-based immersive theatre company Punchdrunk, created the bold, sequined costume O’Connor wears for the duration of Chicken.
“Bryony’s a pro,” said Ryan. “[When we first talked to her], she said, ‘I’ve done a lot of giant birds.’ We were like, brilliant!’ The suit actually has three different layers. There’s the body shape, then the chicken skin, then the feathers and sequins.”
“People have offered to buy the costume off me,” said O’Connor. “[They’re] mesmerized by it.”
Wearing a multi-layered costume while doing a convincing chicken impression, for the duration of an hour-long solo show, isn’t for the faint of heart.
“It’s the hardest show I’ve ever done,” O’Connor shared. “Hildegard is the director and co-writer, but she’s also been the chicken counsellor throughout this whole play because it’s so unbelievably difficult. The costume is hot and really heavy. I have full chicken physicality; I’m bent over pecking. The first run that we did in Edinburgh was four weeks, in a venue that was unbelievably hot with no air conditioning.”
“Bear in mind, Eva did this while she was nine months pregnant,” said Ryan. “She’s an athlete.”
“I felt like, if I could do that, I could get through anything,” O’Connor reflected. “It’s an amazing thrill as a performer.”
Since 2023, Chicken has toured internationally, in Europe and Australia, with the support of Culture Ireland. “We’ve had some really good reviews that talk about how the play addresses the different industrial machines grinding down people in society,” Ryan said. “But I think why the play is so liked is that it operates on two levels. You can see it and think it’s so intellectual, or you can think, ‘What a funny rags-to-riches story.’”
O’Connor agreed that there have been many insightful reviews of the show. “But the biggest response is really, ‘I can’t believe you’re not a chicken.’”
The Bealtaine Theatre Festival runs May 21 to June 7. Tickets are available here.
The Canada Ireland Foundation is an Intermission partner. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.
Nathaniel Hanula-James
Nathaniel Hanula-James is a multidisciplinary theatre artist who has worked across Canada as a dramaturg, playwright, performer, and administrator.
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