Illness, Death, More Illness, Death, The 1977 Bronx Blackout & the Hip to the Hop.
The Germinations of The Body & Blood
Press anyone? Here we go.
Carol Murphy had the idea for The Body & Blood in 2008 whilst her father was dying of cancer. He was obsessed with the Irish Famine and in the late stages of the disease, looked like a famine victim. he said to her once,”We are only one or two generations away from starvation.” She read copiously about The Famine and was struck for the first time by the utter horror of the phenomenon. She became obsessed. She wondered if people ate each other to survive. Before she saw her father dead, she thought, “I wonder could I eat him.” When she saw him dead she thought, “Yes, there is enough to eat.” (Please note: She was mad and felt ashamed to have that thought.) Within a year of his death, her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She returned to the old country with a very sore head, started to pop Prozac, felt better for it, became a carer and entered into what felt like a pseudo amoeba trance-like state for the guts of 10 years. Once that particular cloud lifted, and rained on someone else’s parade, Murphy watched Hip Hop Evolution on Netflix during lockdown in 2020. The shenanigans of The Vigilante Cannibal Nun in The Body & Blood had been on her mind, but she couldn’t find the right form, until she remembered the burgeoning sounds of late 70’s and early 80’s Hip Hop and contemplated the looting of turntables during the Bronx Black Out of 1977.
She thought, “No one is going to fund me for this shit. Why ask for permission? Just do it.” Rather than make a total idiot of herself by trying to rap, Murphy decided to perform the telling of the story of the Mother F*cking rural gangster that is The Vigilante Cannibal Nun in verse; the more crass, the better; engage with the walking talking N’Irish cliché she had become, and write something bally fun for a change. I mean, what is The Vigilante Cannibal Nun and her story about eating the colonizers to save Ireland during The Famine, if not a confused and indeed megalomaniacal interpretation of the eating of the Body & Blood of Christ? Give me a sin, any sin, hi! (I feel a song coming on.) In 2021, Murphy shot The Body & Blood in her bedroom on her iPhone 7 using Ikea lights and her mother’s antique curtains. (Aren’t they beautiful? Wasn’t she beautiful.) The Body & Blood was launched online in January 2022. Murphy performed The B&B at The Black Box in Belfast in May 2022. She will perform The B&B at VAULT Festival in London in February 2023, with more venues to be announced as part of a theatre festival tour next year. Meanwhile, The Vigilante Cannibal Nun is planning to take over the world. Rock on, Maggie, Hi! Doing all the things Murphy can only dream of, seemingly without trauma. Heavy on the “seemingly” Harry. She’s bally dead, hi.
