Bringing Longford together for an 'alive and present' experience

Luke Casserly is a Longford multidisciplinary performer, whose career explores soundscape, ecology and merging how performance can be integrated into the real world. He has a BA in Drama and Theatre Studies from Trinity College Dublin, and a Certificate in Art and Ecological Practice from the National College of Art & Design, Ireland.

Starting off in the Backstage Youth Theatre, he has done many unique original pieces, such as the development of an organic perfume made using botanicals from the Irish bog (Distillation, 2023). His website at https://www.lukecasserly.org/about-me-1 shows a portfolio of everything that he has achieved.

A person who has creative ideas and projects, he came to chat with the ‘Longford Leader’ about his interesting Longford-centric project that he currently has in the works.

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Where in Longford are you from and what schools have you attended?
I’m from Lanesborough in Longford, where I grew up. I went to St Mel’s College in Longford town.

Did you specifically study any modules on multidisciplinary performance?
Yes, I joined Backstage Youth Theatre when I was a teenager. I made the decision then to study Theatre at third level, so I did a BA in Drama and Theatre in Trinity College. After that, I was making a lot of devised theatre and directing new work.
Slowly, my practice began to shift into making more interdisciplinary work I’d say. The format of my work moved from taking place in a conventional theatre to happening in more unconventional spaces. The work I’ve made has brought audiences to different places like beaches, trains, and even a bog in Longford at one point. I also studied Art and Ecology as a diploma at the National College of Art and Design.

How do audiences engage with such performances?
It depends on the project - every piece is different. A recent piece I made was called Distillation which was a performance lecture. It involved me working with a perfume maker over a year to create a unique essence of the Midlands bog where I grew up. The audience sat around a large table and the performance happened in that communal format.

It was very intimate. I’ve made other projects too. In 2019, I worked with another artist (Shanna May Breen) on a piece called Mould Into Shape, which was about plastic as a material.

The audience were brought on the DART in Dublin. We met at Pearse Street Station and listened to an audio piece on the way to Killiney Beach. In the weeks leading up to the performance, Shanna and I did a beach clean and uncovered hundreds of small pieces of plastic.

We collected those and gifted them to the audience to look after for the next 10,000 years as the final moment of the piece.
I suppose my work is usually a bit formally unconventional. The relationship between the audience, the work, and the place is more three-dimensional.

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Is there any recent work that you would like to discuss?
I’m making a new piece at the moment that’s in the early stages of development called 16 Longfords. There are sixteen other towns and villages in the world called Longford and I’m trying to find people called Luke from each of those places. I’m going to make a piece about the cultural and ecological similarities of each place through the eyes of these people called Luke.

It’s still early on. We did a test sharing of it recently as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival. I’ll also be presenting a new soundscape performance that’s come out of a residency I did with the Irish Architecture Foundation and 12th Field last year. I worked with two different communities as part of the Bog Bothy project which responds to the future of the peatlands in Ireland and what the next chapter looks like as we move away from peat extraction.

Over six months, I conducted interviews with local communities in Meath and Offaly and the output was two companion soundscapes which will be shared in Girley and Clara Bog over the coming months. The audience will walk the boardwalks of each bog while listening to the audio, tuning into the history and present situation of those places, and the stories the landscapes hold.

What is your method of creating an idea and making it become a finished product?
There are things I return to in how I make work, but it really depends on the project. With this new piece where I’m trying to find sixteen people who share the same name, the process is quite extended as you can imagine. I like to set myself an almost impossible task. With Distillation, that task was to create a perfume that smells like the Irish bog. It sounds impossible, but it’s the attempt at doing it that becomes the work.

With 16 Longfords, it’s taking a long time to find the people because of the scale of the geographies involved, and the search hasn’t been straightforward. It’s been quite a journey. Generally, there’s a task, and I try as best I can to complete it. The work becomes a documentation of that process. I’m not really dealing with fiction. The work is activated through the action, and then the performance becomes the telling of how it all unfolded.

Are there any sorts of performances that are more challenging than others?
Touring can be challenging. Distillation, for example, premiered in 2023 at Dublin Theatre Festival and has been touring nationally and internationally since, with more dates later this year. It’s exciting, but also challenging to keep the momentum going when you’re performing something multiple times.

The challenge is to make it feel fresh every time - like it’s the first time it’s ever happened for that audience. Even if someone has seen it before, I want it to feel alive and present. That longevity and sustaining that energy can be challenging. A lot of my work blends ecological research, autobiography and site-based work and I suppose because I’m not from a scientific background, I often find myself in conversations with scientists or geologists which can feel a little like imposter syndrome, but I find it really energising to work collaboratively with people from different fields. I think there’s a strong connection between artistic process and scientific research. As an artist, you’re constantly experimenting, trying things out, and researching new ways of doing things.

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Do you have any advice for anyone from Longford who would like to go into multidisciplinary performance?
There are some great courses out there and really interesting work being made. The Drama and Theatre course in Trinity was brilliant for me because it focused on drama but also gave me a lot of skills and tools that are flexible and can be brought into other areas of practice.

NCAD also has some really interesting courses, especially if you’re interested in interdisciplinary or environmentally engaged work. It’s also really important to find people whose work you’re interested in. If there are artists you admire, it’s worth reaching out and having a conversation. People are often happy to give their time and share their experiences.