Mosh – Dublin Fringe Festival – Review

PERFORMANCES – 14 – 17 September – 18:15, €18/€16
AUDIO DESCRIBED PERFORMANCE – 17 September, 18:15, €18/€16
Venue – Project Arts Centre – Space Upstairs

Mosh – Rachel Ní Bhraonáin

“The Mad Bastards, The Pit Protectors, The Karate Choppers, The Bearded Beer Drinkers; everyone plays their part in this ritual of wild abandon.”

This production sets out to explore the audience at a rock concert, specifically the mosh pit! The mosh pit is a complex place. Despite its appearance as a place of frenetic energy and madness, it has its own rules and structures.  While these may not be obvious at first glance, those who frequent these places obey these rules with vigilance.

The Space Upstairs in the Project is used to create a rock concert.  There is a raised platform on one side of the stage.  The other side has a variety of scaffolding tubes and frames.  The centre of the stage is empty, which is kept for the audience at this concert. There are two musicians on stage throughout, with a drummer and guitarist used to create the musical element of a rock concert.  The audience at this gig are the five performers who are there to dance!

The five performers tell us about rock concerts and mosh pits. This explanation discusses gigs from a number of fronts.  They explore the physics of their movement, comparing a crowd with a flock of birds and even bacteria. They also discuss the psychology of the event. The reasons people want to be immersed in a crowd.  We hear first-hand accounts from people who frequent gigs, with a series of prerecorded interviews with rock fans who talk about what it means to them.

The other element of the production is the dancing itself.  It’s hard to recreate the madness of a mosh pit and while the movement on stage is wild, it is still structured. At times, the dancers move in isolation and in other sequences they are in formation, their heads banging to the beat. There is an intensity to the dance and it’s unusual for this style of dance to be considered as an art form.

It is an interesting subject matter for a piece of theatre. While many go to rock concerts and enjoy the madness, it is rare to actually discuss the dynamics of these events and how they work. The music on stage is surprisingly good and it is rare to hear rock music on stage in a theatre setting. If you’re a fan of rock music, or even just want to know more about it from an outsider’s point of view,  this work attempts to explain the unexplainable! The reason why people dance, fight, push and pogo, to try to forget the world and release the animal inside.