EDINBURGH 2023: Growler Q&A

BWW catches up with Dee Mulrooney to chat about bringing Growler to the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Tell us a bit about Growler.

Growler is my alter-ego and performance piece and she’s an 82-year-old shamanic vulva who’s been exiled to Berlin. She’s from one of the oldest inner city working-class areas in Dublin, driven out of her family home by rising rents and poor quality of life. Accordingly she’s appointed herself the voice of the forgotten woman holding forth on femininity, classism, displacement, religion and ancestral folklore. The anonymity of the costume also allows her to speak frankly on topics such as sexuality, religion, class and sexual violence.

What wisdom does she have to share?

Growler is most definitely provocative and has a point to make, seeing herself as on a mission of healing the past to heal the future. She’s acutely aware that we’re living in the time of the anthropocene, and channels many voices - the dispossessed, the forgotten, the displaced and the dead, (yes, she channels dead people) - she’s learned that longing and belonging are universal to the human experience. Uprooted and exiled in her elder years she wanders the streets with her holy staff and shopping trolley exhorting people to "love the eejit" out of themselves. This exile has fostered a strange kind of freewheeling connection, no longer rooted to place, she’s now more like a desert rose rolling and blooming wherever the wind takes her. She has a tongue like a lash and can be as wise as witches, but also a heart of gold yearning for love and laughs.

How is the piece presented?

Growler is the setting. Whether appearing on street corners, under bridges, on trains or stages, she uses her drum, rattle and voice to take the audience on a theatrical, alchemical journey to the shadowlands and back. Through story, song, spoken word her aim is to have you laughing and crying in equal measure. She’s a self declared alchemist transmuting pain into power, power to love, healing to forgiveness, inviting the audience to sing and interact. No stone is left unturned - everyone’s welcome in Growler´s chapel.

Who would you like to come and see this performance?

It’s definitely an adult show due to the themes and Growler´s flowery vernacular, but as I said, other than that, everyone’s welcome in Growler´s space. Over the past five years, I’ve performed in a wide variety of circumstances, the back of moving trucks, music festivals, various European cities, to young and old and every class and creed, but I’ve found there’s always a connection, in every situation people are moved by her. She punches out a strong universal message about our essential connectedness no matter our gender, background or higher notions of ourselves, and all draped in a crushing velvet glove of history and humour. And despite being a giant vulva some of her biggest fans are famous cis men, Damien Dempsey and Jack L being two.

What would you like audiences to take away from it?

I believe art is medicine, I work intensely to facilitate this to happen. I prepare deeply to inhabit Growler and I often reach a state of total presence and flow when I perform. I know when I’m feeling this, and I think the audience does too. I believe there’s an alchemy possible in theatre that can transform and heal. To have everyone singing "love one another" as a call and response to a giant vulva moves me to tears. To create a vulnerable space where artist and audience are held in a moment of belonging and connection is what I´m after; for audiences to feel like they’ve had a heart opening, connected experience with Growler and each other.

Photo credit: Kyle Ferguson

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