Not at Home

WINNER - Best Production - Dublin Fringe Festival 2017

★★★★★ - The Irish Times "(...) It’s a performance, an exhibition, and a place for women’s stories to be told. It’s not a space for debate, or sides, or arguments – it is injecting the voices of women’s experiences where they have been so often left out, and the result is powerful and deeply affecting. You can contend with the space how you see fit. Look, or look away, but it’s hard to avoid being immersed. Hearing the women’s stories aloud and unabridged is overwhelming, and you can’t help but contemplate how Ireland has abandoned the 163,500-plus women who have traveled since 1980. It’s a calm, reflective space for people to make up their own minds, but one that definitely packs a political punch". 

Created by myself and Emma Fraser (Nine Crows), the project recounted the journeys of Irish women abroad to access abortion services over a 4-day run at the National College of Art and Design on Dublin’s Thomas Street, and we invited people who could become pregnant and had travelled to access an abortion to write their experiences — anonymously or otherwise — via a website we created for the project which ran from 2016-2020. .

in June 2017, we visited BPAS Merseyside in Liverpool with Frank Sweeney and Cliona Ni Laoi, who documented sound and video of the entire journey. In September 2017, NOT AT HOME featured video, sound installation and live performance based on these sources. The installation space itself was designed by Emma Fraser to evoke a waiting room. 

There was an actual black cab outside the gallery on Thomas St, which came from Belfast, where people listened to audio of interviews I did with Liverpudlian taxi drivers, recorded by Frank talking about the Irish women they ferried from trains and airports to clinics in Liverpool. 

In the waiting room installation we displayed the special Irish Women Price List offered by most UK abortion clinics. 

They could read actual magazines we sourced from clinics all over the UK and imagine the Irish women who read those magazines as they waited for this procedure. 

Before we opened the piece to the public we held a private viewing for women who had travelled hosted by Roisin Ingle, and facilitated by therapist Ursula Browne called ‘The Recovery Room’

Here are my words at the time of the piece:

“As the conversation around abortion access gets closer to a referendum next year, the divide between those on both sides has continued to deepen and become more entrenched. As that gap widens, the space for calm and thoughtful articulation of women’s lived experiences gets smaller and smaller. We are developing NOT AT HOME as a calm, inclusive way to reclaim some of that space for the thousands of women who have travelled and will travel before the current regime is changed.”

“Therefore, the piece will be accessible to those who are still undecided and feel unequipped to make an informed choice. We don’t want to preach to the converted. We don’t want to shame people into taking a liberal position. We acknowledge that the issue is complicated and complex.  We hope the piece will allow people to witness the reality of the consequences of our current abortion laws. 

We believe there is a diversity of experience at the heart of this issue that is currently being stifled by the division of the broader debate. NOT AT HOME is grounded in the artistic intention to attempt to collect, represent and make visible every story and every experience of those 163,514 women, regardless of circumstance.”

in 2017, we toured the piece to London on the invitation of the London branch of the Abortion Rights Campaign, and were featured on Channel 4 News.

Performed by

Grace Dyas, Jordanne Jones, Clare Barrett & Lydia McGuinness

Directed by

Barry O’Connor

Created by

Grace Dyas & Emma Fraser

Sound Design by

Frank Sweeney

Video Design by

Cliona Ni Laoi

Set Design & Costume by

Emma Fraser

Produced by

Joanna Crawley

Communications Manager

Ben Fraser

Production Managed by

Emma Fraser

Therapeutic Facilitation by

Mari Kennedy

Special thanks to THEATREclub, NINE CROWS, Kris Nelson, Dublin Fringe Festival, National College Of Art and Design, Anna Cosgrave, Una Mullally, Rory O'Neill, Colm O'Gorman, Ivana Bacik, Anthea McTiernan, Ali Grehan, Dr Peter Boylan, Roisin Ingle and to Fran at CAVS and all the technicians and production staff who helped us get the work over the line.

The video at the top of this page was created by Cliona Ni Laoi featuring footage of the installation at NCAD, Thomas St, 2017