Longford Arts: Luke's distillation of culture

How do you define culture? Is it an aspect of human expression that binds us together, and as such all that makes us who we are?

It's our heritage and the threads that weave their way through society defining us.
Culture Night is an opportunity to investigate who we are through those expressions.

Corlea bogway, laid in 148 BC, is an exclamation point of our local heritage. As such it emphasises the importance of peatland to our identity.

Boglands make up 5% of the Irish landscape, and Longford is blessed with an abundance of the resource. We are of it, it has shaped who we are.
The Irish Peatland Conservation Council describes bog as “an important area of peatland, as much a part of Irish natural heritage as the Book of Kells”.

A Longford drama professional is taking the significance of our bogs on a performative journey that explores the Irish bog landscape through scent. 'Distillation' is his response to the recent cessation of the peat harvesting industry in Ireland.
Over the past year, Luke Casserly has collaborated with renowned perfume maker Joan Woods to create a unique distillation of the Midlands bog as the starting point for an olfactory encounter, which looks at our human relationship to place.

“I'm really excited to share it with audiences in Longford,” Luke told the Leader, “We're staging it in the Temperance Hall as part of Culture Night, but also the following night. It'll be lovely to share the work with people in Longford.”
Part lecture, part performance, the project is an ambitious attempt to look at our human relationship to landscape through scent.

“The project came about in 2020, during the pandemic,” Luke explains the origins of the piece, “I was spending time in Longford. I was going for lots of walks on the bog, which is where I live, in Lanesboro.
“Bòrd na Móna were shutting down their operations, so there was a conversation locally about the closure of the peat harvesting industry and the impact that was going to have on the local community.”

Striking a balance between providing employment and the rewilding and healing of the landscape are themes considered in Distillation: “I wanted to make a project that encapsulated both of those perspectives. I also wanted, as a performance maker, to transport an audience to the bog landscape without actually being there.”
This is where perfume maker Joan Woods entered the story: “I began researching scent and smells, how there is a direct link to parts of the brain around memory.”

Luke collaborated with Joan over the past year to create a unique distillation of the Irish bog, the starting point for an olfactory performance, which attempts to translate the landscape for a live audience in an intimate and inventive way.
“We collected different samples of flora and botanicals and began to put together a unique custom-made perfume that was made from botanicals from the Irish bog,” he said, “As part of the experience, the audience would get to smell that perfume that we made.”

Audience members will be invited to smell the custom-made perfume. The idea is to evoke a time and place as a setting for the performance: “The piece is very autobiographical. I'm speaking about my specific experience with that landscape, which is the Irish bog and translating it through scent.
“The exploration of scent and memory, or even of drama and Longford's bogland are not unique, however the manner Luke brings them all together is innovative.

“Distillation is not a drama, nor a traditional theatrical production, it is its own multi-sensual art: “Different artists in various genres have worked with scent in their work. I suppose in contemporary terms we have a very visual culture at the moment, and increasingly a culture dominated by sound. I was intrigued by the idea of achieving connection through scent.
“I thought what would it be like to bring that into the theatre? I'm really looking forward to having people from Longford sharing the experience.”

Tickets for Distillation at Temperance Hall, Longford on Saturday, September 21 at 8pm are available on 043 33 47888 or backstage.ie