Mushroom Language: A Fungal Gothic
Ali Matthews & Company
Producer
I was originally contracted to produce Mushroom Language: A Fungal Gothic for its two night premiere at The Lowry in October 2023. This included contracting, financial management, people management, working with artists and designers to develop the show, marketing, production logistics and evaluation. After a sell out two night premiere I was re-hired to develop the ongoing life for the show. This will include a 2024 and 2025 national tour. Mushroom Language: A Fungal Gothic is supported by Arts Council England, The Lowry, Salford University, Wainsgate Dances, Dartington Arts, Slung Low and New Adelphi Theatre & science partners including Live Wild and the British Mycological Society.
About Mushroom Language: A Fungal Gothic
Mushroom Language is an eco-horror devised piece about the cycles that shape us - eruption, reproduction and decay. It is both eerie and darkly funny.
Fungi are the third kingdom on earth. More like us than we realise, they are closer to animals than plants. Fungi can digest plastic and toxic waste, solve mazes, woo pigs, collaborate with plants to form lichen and change our brain chemistry. Mushrooms are slightly magical - and that’s before we get to psychedelics. To study fungi is to study death, birth, our changing planet and our inner landscapes.
What happens in ML? Two performers try to learn and act out 'mushroom language' through ritual and power dynamics. They move between having frank conversations about the cycles that shape us - eruption, reproduction and death - and high camp role play, acting out the lichen love stories, spore shoot-outs and truffle siren songs found in our forests. The design language uses a combination of natural materials (piles and piles of sticks ) and "trashy" props (swimming caps, water bottles, fluorescent stockings, plastic baby dolls) to help them along the way. It's funny and frightening. The language the performers speak is sometimes graphic (about shit, about rot, about sex) and sometimes highly beautiful and poetic (about trees communicating and crows speaking prophesies).
