UAL Postgraduates attended Mushroom Language - a play about nature and the cycles that shape us

MUSHROOM LANGUAGE is about the cycles that shape us - eruption, reproduction and decay. Nature is hilarious and terrifying.

Check out Lucy's review below:

On a bright sunny blue sky day we entered the darkness of the theatre, skeletal trees embedded with bits of actual (read: prop) skeleton sprouted from the ground– a giant brown plastic tarp.

I dream...

I loved this tarp, I loved the plasticy-ness and the runkles and the hidden holes from which came metres and metres of mycelial webs and into which human bodies disappeared. This thin boundary, so man-made and so permeable and porous, hiding as much as it revealed – coming alive.

We dream...

I loved the dreams, the playing, the emotions, the relationship, the crow stories, how utterly hilarious (see stinkhorn and fly) and unnerving (see 5 seconds later) it was. In this space for 70 something minutes everything was queered. Nothing was settled or contained, it just was/is. To begin with I found this uncomfortable at my edges, like the chilly breeze on my skin inside a dark room with a sudden drop behind me- goosebumps. I wanted structure and clarity and warmth and to know it would all be ok but as the time went on (although afterwards we talked about how we didn’t really feel time when watching) I began to be okay with the unsettledness, I was reassured and comforted by the uncomfortableness, sitting there together in the dark laughing, tears in our eyes. You realised everything always has been queer and it’s wonderful and strange and it's the pretending that it isn't, that everything fits in neat boxes, that’s sinister. I’ve learnt good comedy/horror exposes fears creates something quite profound which I can’t put my fingers on, but I could taste it with a mycelial mouth.

Mushroom dreams...

But what if the metaphors are real? What if it’s both?

The liminal space of dreaming.

In the Q&A Ali Matthews spoke about the human tendency to anthropomorphise the more-than-human and embracing and celebrating the failure of that. “Human imagination is okay”. What if the best way we have to understand and communicate with more-than-human multiplicities is through dreaming? We are after all fungi habitat.

I’ve been mulched! Go on without me.

Thanks to the postgrad community for bringing us all together to see this wonderful show! We’re all excited to see how these connections inspire us as we grow together.

Check out the Mulch Me Song

Learn more about Mushroom Language : a fungal gothic