Photography by James Ireland
My Lover Was a Salmon in the Climate Apocalypse
Winner of the Staging Change x VAULT award 2022
July 2022 - London Irish Centre; and A Pinch of VAULT Festival
August 2022 - Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh Fringe Festival
November 2022 - VOILA! Festival of European Theatre
March 2023 - VAULT Festival
★★★★ - Everything Theatre ★★★★ - Binge Fringe
★★★★ - Fringebiscuit ★★★★ - The Upcoming
★★★★ - All That Dazzles
Photography by Paul John Roberts
About the Play
This gig gets weird: it's time to return to being fish. Winner of the Staging Change x VAULT award.
Humanity's ruined the ecosystem, but humanity’s just a dodgy side branch of fish evolution. The solution’s clear - and that's where the salmon come in.
Fin's climate anxiety culminates in him thinking he's a salmon, onstage, while his girlfriend and bandmate look on in fishy horror. Absurd? No. This is seaspiracy on acid.
This is not about answering the question of whether we can survive this overwhelming timeline we're in. This is about focusing that existential scream into one specific place - the salmon on our plate - and screaming together until our gills turn blue.
With live trad music, FX pedal soundscapes, Irish mythology, global industrial food production, colonialism, fish farming, and probably inevitable ecological destruction.
Trailer - edited by James Ireland
Creative team
Produced by James Ireland and Bradán
Directed by Kate Bauer
Written by James Ireland
Performed by Rory Gradon (Fin), Elinor Peregrin (Fiona), and Elisabeth Flett (Sam)
Music composed collaboratively by the performers and company
About Bradán
Bradán is a collaboration between Kate Bauer and James Ireland, who met in Dublin on a theatre undergrad in 2012.
We make ecological theatre, often with live music. We talk a lot about how difficult subjects like the climate can be to think about all the time. The last thing we’d want is to make a depressing climate show for people to sit through – there’s enough of that in our daily lives. We want to create work that energises, work that opens spaces for contemplation and coming together, and work that gives back. We create work for the future.
Bradán's debut show My Lover Was a Salmon in the Climate Apocalypse won the Staging Change x VAULT award for ecologically-conscious development, and was followed up with Cooking the Vegan Salmon of Knowledge which won the Axis Green Arts Award at Dublin Fringe Festival, where it was also awarded support from PAN PAN through the PAN PAN Platform initiative. Bradán's work has been called "a masterclass of gig theatre" (Everything Theatre), "eco-political theatre at its best" (audience testimony), and "the best gig theatre I've seen" (audience testimony).
Praise for My Lover Was a Salmon in the Climate Apocalypse
"The way this show traverses different forms and keeps you absorbed is a masterclass of gig theatre [...]
Pitch-perfect gig theatre for our time"
- Everything Theatre - ★★★★
"Informative, energetic, divinely absurd [...] the music is sublime throughout"
- Fringebiscuit - ★★★★
"Foot-stomping, fear-raising, and a bundle of climate fury-driven fun, this is how to deliver a message about the climate without almost dropping a beat"
- Binge Fringe - ★★★★
"Brilliantly bonkers, outrageously outlandish, and fantastically funny [...] will have its audience talking about it for days after they watch it."
- All The Dazzles - ★★★★
"A submissive sinking into the absurd, and it packs a chaotic, informative punch."
- The Upcoming - ★★★★
"Musically the three are outstanding. Peregrin's voice is sublime and Flett seems to be able to play all of the instruments ever [...] worth watching for the music alone"
- Lost in Theatreland
"Bradán theatre company is onto something significant with their intimate, confessional style of presentation"
- The Spy in the Stalls
"A show with brilliant music and a massive heart"
- Middle Child gig theatre company
"Bradán theatre has produced my favourite show of the Fringe. So funny and clever and well-written and wonderfully surreal. I loved everything about it."
- Audience testimony
"A ridiculously talented team of musicians take you on a warm but all too real scary story of the climate crisis. The best gig theatre I've seen - 100% recommend"
- Audience testimony
"Absolutely bloody brilliant. A wonderful mix of magic realism and (horrifyingly?) recognisable overwhelming climate anxiety. Absolutely not to be missed."
- Audience testimony
"Some of the most exciting gig theatre we have seen in a while - hilarious and also powerful, will be thinking about that closing monologue for days"
- Audience testimony
"Bizarre and amazing stuff. Eco-political theatre at its best"
- Audience testimony
Poster photography by Rory Gradon and Kate Bauer