Created by Eoghan Carrick & Lauren Jones
Crisis Actor is a performance, a presentation, an exhibition, an interactive theatre piece, an exploration of how we know what is real, and a test of an audience’s mental and emotional resolve – in the very best way, of course.
Created by Eoghan Carrick and Lauren Jones, we enter the space to see a woman sprawled on a white mat that covers the entire performance space. Soon, she gets up, mops up the blood, and explains who she is and what she does – she is a crisis actor, who plays victims of violence, terrorism, disease, and other traumas. She’s proud of her work, as it helps people prepare for the worst. Like many of the assumptions the work plays with, this simple story will become far more complex before the 60 minutes are up.
The performer is Emily Terndrup, an effortlessly and endlessly comfortable stage presence, who brings a simultaneous lightness and seriousness to her role, and interacts breezily but intensely with audience members throughout. She begins by ruminating on why people go to the theatre, the allure of a knowingly false performance, and the relationship between our understanding of reality and fictions depicted on stage and screen. Her touchpoints are mostly American; the Aurora Shooting in Colorado in 2012 is discussed at length. These ideas are intriguing, but there is also nothing groundbreaking in them – they are carried by Terndrup’s sincerity and ability to infuse them with her own meaning.
Beginning with some curious, and amusing, audience interaction, Crisis Actor changes gear, gets a bit more intense, and begins to feel more real – where, exactly, does the acting stop, and the crisis begin? Who is complicit in the crises we are muddling through as a species, and who is just profiting from them? This is where the script begins to match Terndrup’s performance; the answers may leave people more uncomfortable than they had assumed, and this ambiguity is a welcome note. If theatre has any function, and it is safe to assume that you and I believe it does, it is to force people to ask questions of themselves, their assumptions, and the world. And this is evidently achieved in the second half of Crisis Actor.
This is a perfect piece of work for the ever-improving Dublin Fringe – short, intense, experimental, fascinating, and complex, it is the exact kind of thing that only the Fringe can support. While this is a shame, it is also a reminder to savour these 16 September days every year.
Runs Until 12th Sept 2026.
