Performance artist Day Magee introduces their new show On The Way, an 'artist's sermon' on 'the rules they are expected to follow, the rules they are expected to break, and the rewards and punishment they might be seeking'.
You enter a theatre only to find yourself waiting at a dreamlike bus stop - the bus is due, but still hasn't arrived.
Waiting with you are three figures—a cellist, a sign language interpreter, and a performance artist.
I'm the performance artist, my name's Day (As in Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday...) and while we wait, I'm going to tell you a story.
Here I tell the legend of my father Ray Magee - a folk hero to the passengers of the 111 route he drove for 30 years. Who raised me a fundamentalist Evangelical in an otherwise very Catholic country, but despite his best efforts, raised quite the devil's advocate. In telling this story, I give testimony to the differences and similarities between public servant and artist - between parent and child, audience and performer, God and humanity. It is an exploration of what it might mean to believe in anything at all in a post-truth world. A world where the bus may not come, and just what we might do next with that information - how it might yet drive us, where we come from, and where we might be going.
We artists have to explain themselves for a living - to justify our existence through the bureaucratic labyrinth of applying for funding, whilst also pushing the boundaries of what can be understood, and conducting this tension to express meaning.
I am accompanied by ISL interpreter Ela Cichocka, who embodies my words, plus cellist Yseult Cooper Stockdale and live vocal engineer Sebastian Adams (both of the Kirkos Ensemble), who musically and aurally ornament my message. I wear regalia evoking a televangelist-preacher-meets-bus-conductor (constructed by tailor Fionn O'Dubhghaill), and am supported by an incredible team of collaborators and champions.
On The Way is an artist's statement that takes the form of a sermon for my fellow artists, including the artist in everyone. A preaching to the choir, if you will. We artists have to explain themselves for a living - to justify our existence through the bureaucratic labyrinth of applying for funding, whilst also pushing the boundaries of what can be understood, and conducting this tension to express meaning. It is about the rules artists are expected to follow, and the rules they are expected to break - and the rewards and punishment they might be seeking.
It is the logical conclusion of an over-a-decade-long performance art practice, following three and a half years on the Basic Income for the Arts Pilot Scheme, and seven years of grieving a parent.
You might say that I have some things to say.
On The Way: An Artist's Sermon is showing in Project Arts Centre on June 16th and 17th 2026 - find out more here
