One Moment Now – Bewleys Cafe Theatre – Review
by Frank L

One Moment Now  – Created by Murmuration
2pm-5pm (at 30min intervals) – A brand new table-top audio-play especially designed for Bewley’s Café, Grafton Street
Duration: 20 minutes.

One Moment Now has been brought into existence by Murmuration as part of Bewleys Cafe Theatre Artist-in-Residency scheme. It takes place in the cafe itself on the first floor which is a relatively quiet space.

When you arrive you are shown to a square marble-topped table which has a set of headphones lying on it and a small Bewley’s paper bag. In the paper bag are a couple of fistfuls of loose roasted coffee beans. You press a button attached to the headphones and asked do you hear the word “Hello”. You give the thumbs up and the experience begins.

There are two elements in interplay. One is the directions in relation to the coffee beans. The first of these is to smell them in the bag. Then you are asked to empty them into a single mound on the table followed by subsequent directions to divide them and make them into various configurations. In between these directions, you hear voices through the earphones relating simple everyday events between a mother and a child in relation to a grandmother who is ill in hospital.

As you move the coffee beans and contemplate the resulting shapes and listen to the events being described, memories of your own childhood, relationship with your mother and grandmother flash in and out of your mind. The various configuration of the coffee beans symbolise all sorts of different experiences and the passage of time. You have your own trip down memory lane.

You are alone at a table in a cafe with your thoughts for twenty minutes. It is a calming happening as it provides a space in which to reflect. For each person, the happening will be different as each person will have awakened their own individual memories of their past. It is an intriguing but brief event.

Performed by Helen Roche, Bairbre Ní Chaoimh and Austin Casey
Written by John King and Finbarr Doyle
Sound Concept by Jenny O’Malley
Sound Design by Leon Henry
Produced by Tilly Taylor
Developed by Ellen Kirk, Jenny O’Malley, John King, Finbarr Doyle and Tilly Taylor
Images by Dónal Talbot