AGOG

Agog is a short piece on isolation in a suddenly changed world. Traversing time, Agog details the lives of three people as they move with the current state of the world. Also featuring new music from Greg Kearns.

Written by Graham Butler Breen

Music by Greg Kearns

Starring

Jane - Rachel Ann O'Sullivan

Barista/Oran - Ryan O'Donnell

Morris - Graham Butler Breen

Crew

Camera operator - George Parashkevov

Sound operator - Lauren Kelly

Sound designer - Cormac Dowdall

Luna Collective would like to give a special thank you to Crooked House Theatre Company for the use of the Liffey Studio.

AGOG for Luna was the introduction to who we are and also marked the first time that all three of us acted together…sort of. Due to COVID restrictions in Kildare, travel outside of the county was impossible, meaning Ryan could not meet us to rehearse. The initial idea came from wanting to put all three of us together in a performance that showcased Luna Collective; GUY was the tease of us, AGOG is the reveal of us. But how could we do it now that we couldn’t be together? I began to think of Ryan, alone in his home, without Rachel and myself to rehearse with. What would he be doing? Well he would be writing, wouldn’t he? What if he wrote about us? And what would that be about? A flurry began to come out onto a page; a meta-layered creation that was really Ryan writing Graham and Rachel as characters…written by Graham. So Graham writes Ryan writing Graham and Rachel as Morris and Jane. 

I wanted to extract the sense of isolation that people were feeling during the various lockdowns, the longing for company and companionship. How do people write about being lonely without ever admitting that they are, in fact, lonely? There is a certain resistance or denial of the fact that many people feel at all points of life, the thought of “Oh, it could never happen to me, I wouldn’t be sad like that” – but we all are that sad, at least I am. 

There was very little rehearsal process with this project and it followed on the coattails of GUY, released 21 days after it first premiered. I wanted a rustic feel to the project, a very obvious sense of ‘design’ that offered the air of construction which is seen in the opening segment. Our camera operator George suggested we record setting up the space, and we happily played with that notion. What followed was a dressing of the set, an overture saying “what you are seeing is fabricated, it’s all a lie,” further adding to Ryan’s misery of being sat alone at home. It’s not Graham and Rachel setting up the space, it is actually Ryan’s vision or his version of Graham and Rachel setting up the space. 

What was key in the construction of this piece was the ‘real’ moments with Ryan, that had to come from a place of real honesty. Due to the isolation, Ryan would send takes of his performance to which we would comment and note on; it was a challenge as acting on camera was new to all of us. It became, as it is, an experiment we were all agog with. We were genuinely curious to see how it would all turn out, if at all. Ryan’s filming in isolation meant we had to record the phone call and send it to him to act with. Likewise, we couldn’t film the opening without Ryan’s final take of the phone call with Jane. It was complicated!

The final section easily becomes my favourite Luna moment. It looks gorgeous, the imagery is beautiful but…we can’t hear anything. Our mics have stopped picking up sound or else they’re picking up EVERY sound. We’ve lost all the footage, it's all unusable. We are panicked. But wait! If this is all still in Ryan/Oran’s head, then could we maybe cheat it?

And cheat it, we did.

Rachel and myself painstakingly re-recorded and dubbed our audio almost exactly as to how it was before. It was a risk. It was messy. It was bold. But, it somehow fit? It somehow, miraculously, worked AND fit the dramaturgy. A happy accident that, like George’s suggestion, elevated the performance. Lockdown for many people was messy, it was chaotic and trying to keep track of people and relationships became strained, disjointed, out of sync. Perceptions of people swayed and became romanticised. Of course Ryan/Oran would feverishly write his inner-most desires, his mind racing while his actors cannot keep up. 

AGOG is messy, beautifully messy. It was an experiment of style, of story, of how to write a story and how to construct a story. It was also an insight into how not to write a story, in how to plan for every eventuality. AGOG is that story that is birthed out of a deep need for people, for connection, for real connection. It’s lovely to have those thoughts and ideas, romanticised ideals of people; but recognising they are constructions that you have conjured is deeply important. The most important thing is picking up that phone and starting that call, reading the writing in front of you and admitting to yourself: “I need you.”