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Ras Goffa Bobby Sands : A theatre piece that traces the life and political career of Bobby Sands. Performed on a running machine (as Sands was a runner when a teenager), the piece considers how one might place political concerns within a “phenomenological” frame. It has a secondary intention of attempting to blend choreography with the endurance-based goal of some running practices.

This piece of dance theatre traces the life of Bobby Sands, one of ten prisoners who died on hunger strike at Long Kesh prison in Belfast in 1981.The show is performed on a 12 x 6 foot running machine. It has an electro-acoustic soundtrack by Guto Puw and Nick Rothwell. The contextual history of the Troubles is presented through interviews and a poem by the poet Menna Elfyn. Bobby Sands was a runner when he was young; this inspired the idea that running could be compared to the resistance that occurred in Northern Ireland, both demanding endurance and perseverance, both demanding step by step commitment in the present while aiming at a target far in the future. Yet the intention was not to perform the rhetoric of this comparison. The hope was that the movement would stimulate the experience to some extent and yet would measure the gap between it and what could be achieved in the theatre. I conducted research interviews with Denis O’Hearn, biographer of Sands, and Laurence McKeown who was in prison at the same time as Sands and joined the same hunger strike. The route of the choreography was determined by the demands of a conventional theatre space, in which real running could not be achieved. A stimulus for movement had to be created that could not be achieved by setting tasks or exercises. What could be done on the base of the machine, which moved constantly, that would express what had happened? The machine set the tempo of the movement. Is there place for text in a work of dance? Was it necessary in this production? In rehearsal, it became clear that the relationship was not as expected. Ultimately, the number of words was shortened and the music became more of a presence.

This is a theatre piece that traced the life and political career of Bobby Sands. It was performed on a running machine as Sands was a runner when a teenager and the piece considered how one might place these political concerns within a “phenomenological” frame. It has a secondary intention of attempting to blend choreography with the endurance-based goal of some running practices.