Widely regarded as the godfather of Irish electronic music, composer Roger Doyle returns to his roots with the revival of Operating Theatre for MusicTown 2025, marking a new chapter in a long and boundary-pushing creative journey.
On Wednesday 18th June, Doyle will reunite with long-time collaborator Olwen Fouéré for a rare live performance as Operating Theatre at Dublin's National Concert Hall—their first in 20 years.
The duo’s influential project was known for its boundary-blurring fusion of experimental music and theatre, with early works like Spring Is Coming with a Strawberry in the Mouth recently rediscovered and reimagined by Caroline Polachek.
Below, Roger reflects on the genesis of that seminal track and the enduring creative spark that Operating Theatre continues to ignite...
In 1982 I worked in a studio that had a Fairlight Computer Music Instrument. Since I had a key to the studio I worked in 'dead time' teaching myself how to use it and make it work. It took me 2 months to do this - with the manual being thrown against the wall on one occasion. Because it was digital technology I found it particularly hard, because of legacy issues, and I was not used to working this way.
In 1984 Bono saw an interview with me in the newspaper saying that I could make the sound of an orchestra from a computer keyboard and asked me if I’d give him piano lessons. He was setting up the Mother Record label to expose Irish music to a wider audience.
Naturally, I played him a demo of Spring Is Coming With A Strawberry In The Mouth. He immediately thought it had possibilities and invited me to properly record it and Queen Of No Heart in Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin. He was a good student and did his homework.
The Fairlight sequencer only allowed you to record one monophonic line at a time, thus no chords. You could do this a maximum of eight times. Without thinking too much about it I began inputting a melodic line, having chosen what sounds to work with from the Fairlight library. Then I’d add a second line…and so on. And you could only input one bar or measure at a time before you could move on to the next one.
I’ve always been able to access the intuitive part of the brain that seems to know what’s going on. To me it feels like the right brain takes care of the composing and the left brain responds with, ‘How did you come up with that?’ The whole thing only took about 10 minutes. That’s how I remember it anyway.
I was already working on some songs with singer/lyricist Eléna Lopez, who also wrote poetry and she demoed a melody line over the backing track with words from one of her poems. And I invited drummer Sean Devitt to play drums on this recording. It was Sean who introduced me to the owners of the Fairlight after telling me about them and it ,one day at the employment exchange.
Bono became very taken with Eléna’s singing and produced the 2 sides of the 7" single (Queen Of No Heart and Spring Is Coming With A Strawberry In The Mouth) and even played a guitar line in Queen Of No Heart. Sadly, the record lacked proper promotion and soon disappeared to my great disappointment.
Nearly 30 years later our music got a new lease of life: Operating Theatre are experiencing a resurgence and are enjoying recent worldwide success as Caroline Polachek covered Spring is Coming with a Strawberry in the Mouth to worldwide acclaim, and high-end fashion house Gucci used the track on their worldwide Horsebit jewellery collection.
Fashion brand Chloé have also featured the original version of Spring is Coming with a Strawberry in the Mouth on their worldwide online fashion collection. This is overwhelming for us.
It is such a special thrill for me to see Operating Theatre breathing a new life. I am also enlivened to be back performing with the wonderful Olwen Fouéré, it is an honour for us to perform together and relive our Operating Theatre days. Olwen is a very talented performer and singer and we have put our heart and soul into this very special concert for Musictown and hope the audience, both old and new will enjoy every second of it as much as we will.
What to leave out, what to re-imagine from the back catalogue, what new material… It’s a hell of a challenge and an opportunity to work with Olwen again. She and I worked on my Finnegan’s Wake project recently, and all the old magic was there.
Operating Theatre play MusicTown 2025 at the National Concert Hall Dublin, on Wednesday 18th June - find out more here.
