Artist Barry Fitzgerald reflects on grief, masculinity, queerness and home through his new performance work Mourning is a Muscle, which will be performed from May 30 to June 1 as part of the Carlow Arts Festival. Writing for GCN, he shares how a series of letters to his late father became the starting point for a deeply personal piece blending performance, ritual, music and memory.

In 2020, I was in a London lockdown, unable to travel back home to Ireland. I tried to put my head down and work on different projects, but my heart yearned to be back in the Carlow countryside, and I found myself writing to my father, who had died four years earlier.

The writing became a sort of ritual and then a series of letters. I wasn’t thinking about making a project. I think I was trying to make sense of missing someone who still felt very present in my life. I didn’t know it at the time, but this is where Mourning is a Muscle started.

The letters became a way of talking to my father again, of looking at moments in our life afresh or imagining new ones. In a way, they also became a conversation between different versions of myself – the child I was growing up in Tullow, the adult living in London, and a version of me trying to hold it all together.

As I wrote, everyday activities started to creep in. I made tea the way my father liked it: very strong, almost treacle. I listened to Annie Lennox and Neil Diamond, music that reminded me of times together. I wore his shirts, or cravats, sometimes his shoes – the ones with steel caps on the heels – because then I could hear his walk in mine.

Like many relationships, there were periods where we felt very connected and close, and other times where there was a distance. This ebbed and flowed across the years, and for different reasons. A lot of it was tied up in ideas around masculinity and what I thought I was supposed to be.

 

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I spent years trying to be “man enough”, ideas I didn’t really fit into. When I came out, things changed between us. It’s like we got to know and see each other in a different way; not fixing everything, but shifting things. I began to see the individual he was, outside of being my father, and for me, it felt like I could be myself – masculine, feminine, everything in between – and that was enough.

I’m a maker and performer, often creating work inspired by my identity and experiences, so it’s not surprising that these experiences have inspired Mourning is a Muscle. Of course, there is a strangeness to making something so personal, but I don’t see it as sharing a diary entry, and of course, it’s my version of our relationship. I acknowledge that in the piece. Ultimately, our relationship is an anchor for me to open up ideas and questions around mourning.

I didn’t want it to be a show where people sit and watch a story about grief. I wanted something more shared, more physical – something people move through together. I also wanted it to be fun! So the work brings together my father’s world and my own – Westerns and Neil Diamond sit next to Annie Lennox and camp. There is line dancing, lip-syncing and a lot of denim! It deals with mourning, but also with family, queerness, identity and home. It doesn’t stay in one tone for long; it shifts the way memory does, quickly and unexpectedly.

We’ve created a piece that is part performance and part installation. When the performance is not happening, people can come in, look at objects, read, listen to music, sit down, and spend time there in their own way. They can also have a cup of tea. That mattered to me as it’s the most everyday of mourning rituals. It slows things down, can hold difficult moments or make space for people to just be.

Coming back to the brilliant Carlow Arts Festival feels significant. Along with VISUAL and Carlow Arts Office, they’ve been so supportive of my work, and I first showed a work in progress, sharing the piece at the 2024 festival. This time it’s the full version, and to have it at home matters because so much of the work is rooted in that place – the landscape, the references, and the memories.

What I hope people take from it is quite simple. That mourning isn’t only in the large, formal or religious activities. It shows up in daily life, and often in small ways. You can make your own rituals, and it’s ok to return to them again and again – working and flexing something to keep you healthy, in your heart. Sometimes funny, or even strange; sometimes as simple as learning a dance or making a cup of tea.

Mourning is a Muscle comes to Carlow Arts Festival, running May 30 to June 1. Get your tickets here.