Wideawake

Language, in written as well as in spoken form, constitutes the essence of Orla Barry’s work. She ties words into phrases, kneads sentences into paragraphs, ending up with a visual as well as verbal unity, an apparently non-structured stream-of-consciousness with an open and poetical structure. The monologue in ’Wideawake’ is performed by Caroline Donnely. A stressed-out young woman trips up and down on a platform in high heels. Clearly abandoned to her fate, she repeatedly begs for someone to book her a hotel for the night. But no one is there. The abyss of existential anxiety and mental and physical collapse is opening up In front of her. “I am acrobatic with words, but my actions cannot always follow my tongue”. Her continuous stream of words is a touching interior monologue in which consciousness and subconscious clamp into each other in a hellish downward spiral leading to total abandonment.