The Forbidden Experiment
by Michael John O’Neill
… the king caused tak ane dumb woman, and pat hir in Inchkeith and gave hir two bairnes with hir…
A quasi-historical riff on the Prometheus story and an examination of guilt, The Forbidden Experiment followed Scottish King James IV’s experiments into language deprivation with two children and a mute woman in 1493, while providing snapshots of a 1944 New Mexico family transforming into mutants under Robert Oppenheimer’s nuclear skies.
These strands were tied together with music, dance, animation and storytelling in an ‘autobiographical’ narrative that brought Michael to an island in the firth of forth that sat fixed at the centre of all three stories, to meet a silent figure left there waiting for the end of the experiment.
The Forbidden Experiment was the recipient of the 2014 Platform 18 Award, and was performed at The Arches and the Traverse as part of the Behaviour festival in April and May 2014.
“luridly brilliant writing and performance”
— The Scotsman