By May 14, 2020
Best known for her site-specific touring show, Broken Bone Bathtub, Siobhan O’Loughlin is a performance artist, filmmaker, and activist based out of Brooklyn, NY with a penchant for weaving connectivity across distances. Twice a week since March 27, O’Loughlin and her co-producers Dennissa Young (of Rock Hill’s W.A.M.A artist collective) and Brendan Leahy have been hosting a globally accessible interactive digital experience that brings human warmth and direct, genuine conversation to these isolated times.
During the immersive theatre performances, which happen via Zoom, O’Loughlin dreamily recounts personal anecdotes of tender moments that she clings to during these worldwide uncertain and despairing days. Proud memories of her time in Charlotte where she unexpectedly found love and lasting friendships among too many drinks at The Thirsty Beaver and a Plaza Midwood dance party. O’Loughlin shares these vignettes of her recent life in an effort to guide viewers and active participants to share their own stories, piecing together space, support and community within the one-hour performance. Storytelling is the oldest human form of communicating, predating all written language and perhaps even the main reason why we have written language at all today. O’Loughlin, who has performed her art and storytelling throughout the world, is a natural leveller, capable of finding relations among people from all different backgrounds by utilizing the simple and compassionate foundation of sharing. Although every week is a different show, the reciprocal affair plays out like a light therapy session with talking points of current disrupted sleep patterns, self-doubt, and larger themes of gratitude, worthiness, and connectedness.
Please Do Not Touch the Artist encourages expression so that you may share your experiences outwardly rather than lean into the isolation and remote solitude that this quarantine has edged the world at-large into. Each performance is pay-what-you-can and all microphones are muted unless you’re chosen to participate. If you’re not quite ready to join the conversation, keeping your camera-mode off lets you experience the show as a friendly supporter. Turning your camera on lets the moderators know you’d like to share a bit of yourself.
This weekend, O’Loughlin will be premiering her interactive two-part rom-com, My Heart Goes Zoom, a playful navigation of flirting, love, and life during quarantine, starring you the viewer.
For registration to this or any of the performances, visit Siobhan O’Loughlin’ website.
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