Distillation review – paean to peat is the party of strength | Section

Seating at a round table covered in a pile of dry peat, a writer and a musician Luke Casserly can lead an arcane ritual. When he holds a large amount of peat in his hands and hands it to the small audience around the table, the first gasps of respect dissolve into hysterical laughter.

The sound of birds and the wind evoke the old bogs of the Irish Midlands, where Casserly grew up. Part story, part conversation, this kind of play, participation involves touch, sound, taste – especially the smell of soil, moss and peat smoke, which are later presented as perfumes created by perfumer Joan Woods; message in a bottle.

With images of boats exposed to Casserly’s white coat that doesn’t really affect the bright evening light, there’s an aesthetic, a work-in-progress, an artistic flair. A partnership between the Abbey Theater and New Light in Washington DC, has toured extensively in the US and Canada since its debut in 2023, showing modern technology in Ireland 10,000 years ago.

Returning to live in County Longford during the Covid-19 pandemic, Casserly walked the streets, seeing them anew, he tells us, as their community culture was about to change. Non-recycled industrial waste and energy sources, Ireland’s bogs are being restored as protected areas, with a variety of ecosystems that absorb oxygen from the atmosphere – and sometimes, replaced by wind farms.

In a conversation with his father who worked as a peat harvester, Casserly asks what has been lost, culturally and emotionally, in this great change. The immediate effect, he says, is a kind of sadness. Throughout its 50-minute duration, this fictional performance oscillates between natural meditation and exploration of cultural memory.