Bluets

»Bluets« starts with a love that has been lost, caring for a friend who has met with an accident and an obsession with the colour blue. The unnamed main character of the text has been left by the »prince of blue«. Her broken heart is juxtaposed by the tragedy of her friend Rachel, who is left quadriplegic after an accident and whom she now cares for. At the same time, she is pouring all her energy into her obsession for the colour blue.

Maggie Nelson’s book, a collection of 240 prose miniatures that was celebrated as a literary sensation, mixes the philosophical, the lyrical and the banal, observa- tions and reflections, personal experience and inventions, associations and research. The narrator's voice thus covers all shades and secrets of the colour blue. She guards her collection of blue objects with pride, knows all musicians and artists who have succumbed to blue: Joni Mitchell, Billie Holiday, Yves Klein and more. At the same time, however, she uses the colour in order to explore her grief over a lost love and her paralysed friend’s suffering.

Rarely has there ever been such a poetic and inspiring dissection of pain as the one Maggie Nelson delivered: a lyrical, philosophical and deeply personal exploration of one’s own capacity for suffering.

Katie Mitchell, artist in focus at this year’s FIND, lets three actors embody the narrative voice in her production and uses methods from film and live audio drama to create
a portrait of an unhappy obsession for the colour blue in multiple voices. Irish playwright Margaret Perry adapts Maggie Nelson's text for the stage.

MAGGIE NELSON, born in San Francisco in 1973, is a poet, critic and essayist. She teaches at the California Institute of the Arts. In 2016, she was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for her book »The Argonauts«, and in the same year Maggie Nelson received the prestigious MacArthur »Genius Grant«.

MARGARET PERRY is an Irish playwright. Her debut play, »Porcelain«, premiered at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 2018. Other theatre credits include »Collapsible«, which won the Fishamble New Writing Award at Dublin Fringe 2019, and »Paradise Now!«, which was nominated for a 2023 Olivier Award. She has been a member of playwriting groups at the Soho Theatre and the Royal Court Theatre and she is a MacDowell Fellow.