Alma Kelliher: "If there’s a message I think it’s that there is power in a gathering"

Culture
21 Mar 24

Alma. Copyright Miguel Ruiz.

Composer, sound designer and THISISPOPBABYs company artist Alma Kelliher talks about their latest high-octane, heart-thumping production WAKE

When I meet Alma Kelliher, she is wearing a fashionable matching two piece tracksuit (from a scandi fashion brand I am told). She's lively and sparky, and you can see the cogs working behind her eyes. She clearly has what my grandmother would describe as "brains to burn".

Just from the gait of her, you’d know that she was in a back to back run of one of Dublin’s best selling musical shows; WAKE.

A THISISPOPBABY production, WAKE is an emotional rollercoaster- at times funny, sad, and joyous-WAKE is always spirited . This, Kelliher says, is a THISPOPBABY signature.

“The company was born on the dance floor”. the composer tells me.

“It was born in the mid 2000s and Phillip and Jenny (Phillip McMahon and Jennifer Jennings) are club kids and they know the power of that and I think that appeals to me.

“There’s a huge heart in everything they do” she explains.

“They’re super cool but they’re not.their coolness is a welcoming cool. Everyone is welcome to their party. I really love that”.

WAKE itself though, takes that and then some: “The show is a rollercoaster.” Kelliher continues.

“Sometimes what we want to elicit is uncontrollable laughter. Other times it is an open heart even when it costs you. Another time it might be wild abandon and joy at dancing and being together. All of those things are happening in one show”.

“So my job is to find a through line between those feelings- loads of emotions, but each considered at a different point in the show”.

As composer, sound designer and musical director for WAKE, Kelliher takes her role seriously, and part of the brief is research: “What you see on stage- it’s like an iceberg. The thing on stage is just the very tip of all the work we put in over the course of years”.

Continuing, she says: “We have multiple workshops and people come in and speak to us about the history of the Irish wake and Irish heritage generally. We take the research aspect of it really seriously”.

Kelliher says: “One of the things was I wanted to make sure that if we were including traditional Irish music that I understood what I was including because I don’t come from a trad background”.

“I wanted to make sure that it was good and it was genuine. One of the things I did was go to the Willie Week as it is called (the Willie Clancy Trad Festival Clare), and I had an absolute ball.

"I took Tin whistle lessons for the whole festival. I learned so many tunes and met so many people and I ended up in pubs for a whole week”.

And WAKE has the musical chops to show for it, in spite of being infused with THISISPOPBABY’s club sensibility, there’s undoubtedly a respect and understanding of the source material.

Alma. Copyright Miguel Ruiz.

However as Kelliher points out, dance and trad may not be as different as people think: “A rabbit hole I went down musically was the comparison between dance music and trad and the idea of ‘the drop’. The idea of build build build and then the drop happens - that’s trad.

That’s pure trad- you hold someone off and then you change the key at the last second and it makes the whole group scream”.

With the parallel in mind - Kelliher says she doesn’t think WAKE is all that different from a night painting the town red: “I think primarily I would actually describe WAKE as a night out”, she says laughing.

“Which is kind of wild. There’s singing, there’s contemporary dancing, there’s spoken word, there’s a dj, Irish dancing, there’s aerial art”.

Concluding she adds: “lt does in a way feel like all the great things in a music festival in one space”.

But with all these show stopping theatrics - what does WAKE want audiences mamebers to take home with them?

"There's a feeling certainly”, the composer says.

“If there’s a message I think it’s that there is power in a gathering. There’s great power in being together- particularly now when it’s a time of isolation and division.

“The very act of being together and the act of feeling alive together feels really important and joyous and precious. We want people to come away feeling fired up from that”.