Sydney Theatre Company presents
TheEmergencyRoom and Galway International Arts Festival
in association with Cusack Projects Limited
RIVERRUN
The voice of the river in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake
Adapted and performed by Olwen Fouéré

Lauded in London and Dublin, plunge into Ireland’s most fearless performance

James Joyce’s final book, Finnegans Wake, is infamously unreadable. It is written in language and written against language. It flexes itself around the constrictions of letters, words and sentences. It is also, fundamentally, a virtuosic act of writing, a standardbearer for 20th century creativity. Spoken aloud, Joyce’s text has an ineluctable power that pulls us in to its currents and washes us up on its banks.

Olwen Fouéré, one of Ireland’s leading performers and theatre makers, was last seen with STC in Abbey Theatre’s startling Terminus in 2011. In riverrun, she has created an acclaimed new adaptation of Joyce’s fiendish classic.

Fouéré’s unique approach is to find the voice and dance of Joyce’s words. In her mesmeric performance, the musicality and visceral force of the text become clear. The result fuses vocal performance, movement, sound design and lighting in a bold new way that is both captivating and illuminating, offering us safe passage along Joyce’s extraordinary river of words.