There is something great about being in the lashings of rain. When you are making theatre on a hill that has a feeling of sacred ritual about it it’s even better. Something good is bound to come out of it.

I am kneeling in a gap between furze bushes waiting for a signal from a woman with pure white hair and pale blue eyes. Behind me and further up the hill is a stone building. A circle open to the sky. Walls seven to ten feet deep. You enter through a doorway into a circular room – nowhere…somewhere in time and space. The wind is above us now and we are voices.

The people have come from Derry and Donegal to witness this work in the weather and in the land. They are joining us in holding a note as a background to a song…a cry really, a prayer maybe. We stand thinking of our people and the land; this place and our lives and what is to come.

This night of fleeting darkness
A blink in summers blooming
Still the imagination
Awake a newborn story
Awake divine potential
Awaken sense and healing
Awake the hearts agenda…..

More was sung in the language of the country. More humble and embracing. But we are human and everything counts and nothing matters. Hello we said to each other and Erla from Iceland sang ‘drink to me only with thine eyes.’

Then as we leave the place and descend the hill away across another hill a horse is drawn upon the earth with fire. Two, maybe three miles across. Huge! Four or five hours later the sun rose and we stood in the garden facing summer.

Grianán Aileach. Inis Eoin peninsula.